This was the title of an important book by Rick Wilson, a Republican who has since been in the leadership of the Republican Voters Against Trump and the Lincoln Project. The book came out in August 2018, and was to some extent one of the vanguard books of the movement against Trump, certainly from those on the political right. In many ways the title proved to be incredibly emblematic of what we have seen in all of 2020, and only more so in recent weeks. In the last few weeks, the reputation of Walter Reed Hospital has been seriously tarnished over the manipulations related to Mr. Trump’s treatment and infectious status. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been probably irreparably damaged and blocked in terms of any serious public health action at every turn. Ambassador Debbie Birx, a former public health leader at DOD and CDC who I knew and was familiar with with the ambit of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), has been made a mockery of and utterly reduced to a pathetic totem of the Administration. Her attempts to somehow mitigate and defend the indefensible from the White House are been rightly ridiculed and she has joined the trash heap of those who have been destroyed by this Administration.
How many more have been caught up in their ambitious and complicit silence? How many more knew better but failed to speak up to challenge the nonsense spouted at every turn by the criminally negligent and corrupt? Mitt Romney, who does not have a great history of showing a backbone, made a pretense of standing up against the corrupt and complicit during the impeachment hearings but promptly crept back to toe the line. Tonight one is hearing Senator Ben Sasse and ex Governor Christie finally speak up to essentially say the Emperor has No Clothes. But where were they before? Where was Sasse before his primary? Where was the author of “Them” professing to reject the destruction of bipartisanship? And where are the others from amongst the rabid mob rushing to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the second of two stolen seats on the Supreme Court? And how sad and tragic to see the clownery of Democratic Senator Feinstein from California, praising Lindsay Graham for leading “the best hearings” she had every participated in…
