 It's Wednesday, it's 11 o'clock. That could mean the only one thing is Trump week. Well, last week at the end of the show, I promised that the next time we met for Trump week, we would have more new wild things. Well, I can't disappoint and the prediction is true. We have an entire list of things that have transpired in just one week's time that jaw dropping and might rock you out of your seat. But before we go down that list, I'm gonna talk to our co-hosts that are joining us for Trump week. That's Winston Welch and Stephanie Dalton. Welcome both of you. Thank you for attending. Appreciate it. Aloha. Aloha. Aloha. So let's just fire down the list because since last week, we've had what I call a potpourri of possibilities and they're all displayed during the press conferences, the hour, hour and a half long press conferences each and every day. And Donald Trump is the ringmaster and he just doesn't disappoint. So let's just kind of go down the list and we'll discuss them. Number one, Trump fires the Glenn Fyde, the IG that was tasked of providing oversight for the $2 trillion congressional fund. Who knows how that's gonna be now taken over and provide proper oversight so that Congress could see and know exactly how this money's gonna be spent. Trump attacks the Health and Human Services IG for the March 31st report about, that was the one where 400 hospitals were interviewed and the report basically said all these hospitals were woefully low on PPEs and ventilators. Donald Trump got very upset when this question was raised to him during one of the press conferences. And so we'll talk about that. We're gonna talk about the acting Navy Secretary, Thomas Mowley and his comments about Captain Crozier and Captain Crozier was relieved of his duties due to his concern about his crew and the infection of COVID-19. And since that time, the Navy Secretary has resigned his position. We're gonna talk about Donald Trump and his recent criticisms of the World Health Organization. And what I perceive as him basically trying to deflect and redirect blame for the late response the United States has over this COVID-19 pandemic. We're gonna also talk about Donald Trump since then is acknowledged that Peter Navarro, his trade secretary and the memo that was produced at the end of January, predicting the deaths and the destruction of the economy. And that was at the end of January and Donald Trump acknowledges the memo, but of course says, I never saw it. So we'll talk about that. And last but not least, we have some news today that Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the presidential run. So there's a mouthful, you guys. Let's just tackle the first one. What do you guys think about Donald Trump and his releasing Glenn Fine as the IG that was going to oversee the $2 trillion worth of congressional funds? What a surprise that was. Well, I think there's some conflict with that. Let's start with Winston first. Stephanie, let's go with Winston and then we'll hit. Sure, sure. Yeah. Oh, I mean, how do you even start to wrap your head around every single day a new assault on our values, on morals, on ethics? It's hard to overstate. It's impossible to overstate the damage that's being done on a really an hourly basis by this administration. The fact that he kept this fellow in a week or two weeks is surprising to me. And didn't he say at one time that he would be the one that oversees everything? But I guess he's put in another lackey until he gets fired across his hammer actually tries to do the right thing, which he'll definitely get fired on. So I don't put much credence in it at all. It's just shocking the endless litany of violations that have happened the entire course of this administration, but especially it reaches over this entire COVID mishandling from the beginning to the end. And the immense amount of deflection, blame, I think it's summed up by, I don't take responsibility for anything at all or whatever to that effect. Well, let me ask you this question, Winston. Didn't the law actually put in provisions that Donald Trump could not get involved with any kind of oversight that there would be, there would be oversight over this fund? Wasn't that written into the law? I thought that that was, but as we know, this administration, it routinely ignores the law, bottom line. They ignored norms and values and upholding their responsibilities for this. So the fact that he fired someone that would potentially have oversight over even one of his businesses doesn't surprise me at all. I mean, as you said before, this is gonna be a big slush fund, no matter how you slice it or dice it. Hopefully a lot of it will get down to little people and really the little people, every man and woman. Yeah, the little people, let them eat crumbs, but hopefully it will bleed down somewhere through there, hour when or why, but you have to expect a mass amount of corruption, misment, nepotism in these things in any state, but this particularly with this administration, it's the norm. So we shouldn't expect it to be less. So Stephanie, what's your read on that one? Well, I was just gonna share that without going into all of the steps of the regulations or the statute that it isn't something that Trump can do easily. So not only is there a difficulty with the firing of this man, there's also the difficulty with the appointment because there has to be a certain status of the person recommended and this one doesn't have that status. So I'm just bringing this up to indicate that there's gonna be more shifting around until Trump can get his person in there and he does have somebody that he's submitted that he really wants in there. So these two people on the front, the one that's been asked to go or told to go and the one that's temporarily filling in that he's gonna change. And there is a question as to whether the one that he's told to go can be sent that easily. So it just makes me recall how important the structure surrounding the appointment and dismissal of people in these roles and for malfeasance or cause it really need to be clear and certainly do need to be there to use in these circumstances. Sometimes we might have thought, oh, how cumbersome and how complicated, but when there's a rogue in charge, which unfortunately we have some indication there might be that we need a lot of safety nets to protect traditional issues. Well, we all know that the main criteria for Donald Trump and his appointments is one, get rid of people who are competent that are career service federal employees, get rid of them and let me insert those that are loyal only to Donald Trump. So that's the criteria and that's what we've been working with for the last three years and he's pretty much gutted the federal system. Let's jump around a little bit here. I wanna talk about Donald Trump's recent, how should I say? He's tried to redefine the playing field. He's trying to deflect the criticism that he is getting from everywhere about his slow response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the slow response for testing, the slow response for social distancing, the slow response from the government's procurement of ventilators and PPEs for health professionals, the slow response to everything. The question is he's trying to redefine it as that he knew all along that this was serious and that he didn't wanna talk about it a year later and he didn't wanna upset the American public. So he's already admitted that he knew that there was a dire serious situation but because he's such a cheerleader he didn't wanna upset the American public. So his recent maneuver here yesterday was to point fingers at the World Health Organization saying that they were guilty and they compromised the fast response and they were at fault for not moving on this thing faster. And he now is considering restricting the funds that the United States sends to the World Health Organization. I believe it's about 14.6% of that budget that the United States contributes. What's your feeling about Donald Trump's ability to try to change the nature of the playing field about responsibility and also trying to pin it on the World Health Organization? Winston, what do you think about that? It's sad fundamentally. It's not to say that there's not a lot of responsibility that needs to be shared by different groups whether it's governors, World Health Organization or the administration primarily but in this case the World Health Organization has been on this. It has been warning of since early January and saying we need to have the systems in place and it's coming and it's here and they were remiss for not declaring this a pandemic much earlier. I will agree with that and that's the problem is that a lot of times you see with Donald Trump is there is a small bit of truth or that you could suss out in there but what happens is that tiny bit of truth then becomes the basis for the narrative for the big lie and I encourage people to look at an article that it was in today's Washington Post by a great sergeant called Hannity's as Sean Hannity's latest propaganda actually exposes Trump at great failure and it talks about how the new narrative the Orwellian 1984 reframing of this as Trump as a master and victor and savior of us all from this pandemic and it is being written right now during this and that is the tale that's been to be true believers and that is what they're looking for. So I, again I wouldn't expect anything less than manipulation deceit and outright just to people in the spin. So it doesn't surprise me but people need to research this for themselves. They need to understand what actually happened who can bear some responsibility. If he went up to the American people and said you know what I messed up in this it's he's not gonna do this but people, people accept that they can accept and say and this is what we're doing because we messed up they can deal with that that is never going to happen with this man and there's going to be a lot of death because of that and that is attributable to this it's not exclusive blame but passing this off on the World Health Organization or the media or anybody else is absolutely irresponsible and unhelpful at this time. Yeah, let me cut lanes in here and talk about the Peter Navarro the trade secretary's memo that was produced at the end of January and in that memo it clearly lined out Mr. Navarro's concerns about a devastating human life the number of cases that would most likely take place with COVID-19, the devastation of the economy and it was basically a cry for the administration to take notice of this and treat it seriously like it should have been. And as of yesterday Donald Trump acknowledged that yes Mr. Navarro was correct everything he said in the memo is correct but then he said, I never saw it. So here's Donald Trump again with the hand of a magician to redefine the narrative and basically deflect his responsibilities by saying, I never saw the memo it must have been my administration and they don't tell me everything. So isn't he responsible for his administration his department heads, the staff isn't as commander in chief that is a leader at being President of the United States that he does take responsibility for all his administration not just the ones that show him a memo or don't show him a memo. Stephanie, what do you think about that? Well, I continually am astonished at how he takes the daily, he took over the daily briefing which is of course Pence's committee report and he uses that to promote himself and to do the rallies in the form of the television show instead of at the sites where he has his rallies but he also now can take the Peter Navarro memo which was meant to point out how he had mis-stepped from the get-go and he turns it around into telling what I heard him say on the briefing was how it was at the same time maybe post dated from when he stopped China from sending people here or travel here or some deliveries here. And so he's using that to rewrite the narrative of his actions. Stephanie, that's a really good point. I want to interject something. That's a really good point. For every criticism that comes Donald Trump's way, the first thing he leaps to is his travel ban from China. Well, let's look at that because it wasn't a travel ban. It was just non-U.S. citizens that were putting in a travel ban and by no means was he first because 36 other countries had done the same thing by February the 2nd. So let's talk about a Swiss cheese policy where all other citizens can go back and forth, back and forth and let the COVID-19 leapfrog back and forth between China and the United States and that's exactly what happened. So Donald Trump's his major chess move to say that I see what a good boy I am, I was on top of this was a policy that was very, very fraught with inaccuracy and it was a faulty policy. It wasn't a travel ban by any means. Well, exactly and the concern is of course that he is using this stage of the daily report, we have to listen to this daily and then he rewrites, he re-speaks the narrative, retells the narrative and that's a signal out to all of his representatives who are gonna run this for the rest of the day and the week and the forever so that everybody's gonna be confused about how all that happened just as you described it to him. And so it's really important that that timeline be kept in the memory. I think there is some writing going on about how to keep that information alive and not have it just run over by this man who has no holds on saying anything but what is gonna be self-serving much, much more than doing anything to save the nation. Yeah, well, later on the show we're gonna talk about that. We might as well talk about it right now and that's Fox News because they created the initial narrative that this COVID-19 was hyped up. It was a democratic ploy to make Donald Trump look bad. It was quote unquote a hoax. There's now the first lawsuit from Washington state and that lawsuit basically is taking Fox News to task that they misrepresented the facts that they had and that by misrepresentation that has now caused much more life, the loss of life that was certainly necessary, had the United States acted earlier and had locked down certain states much faster. Any comment about these lawsuits that are gonna crop up against Fox News? Winston, what do you think about that? I don't, you know, if you're duped enough to be watching Fox News then you know, you're gonna reap the results of that. And honestly, I feel for people that that's their source of news and that they feel that that is the true news and that is, you know, it's essentially the official news channel of Donald Trump. So very occasionally you'll get some contrary or even neutral voices out of there but they do come up with some things that just say it how it is and I'm always happy when that happens. It's important to follow what Fox News says just so you can understand what's getting out to those folks but we do have a free press in this country and people are allowed to choose what they want to watch and you have to have responsible watching just like you have to be responsibly and, you know, look both ways before you cross the street. So I don't know that the lawsuits are gonna go anywhere. They will say this was our interpretation of the facts at the time. I think it's at this point, noise and more important is I would not like to see the other side happen where the enemies of the people as Donald Trump has often described the press as well as many other things would become such to these sorts of lawsuits but to shut them down of truth and reason even if it is hyperbole as well on the left. Stephanie, what's your thoughts about potential class action suits against Fox News for the alleged misrepresentation of how serious COVID-19 was? Well, I certainly support Winston's comments. I agree with them and see that that cause is a steep hill and I just, and it takes a long time and so that's not bothering anybody that's in the suit because it takes so long to get through the court. So what is the remedy? I don't know. I mean, it used to be that the corroboration of information across various venues would be one way to check up for the ordinary citizen viewer because most of us don't have time. Most people out there too busy or dealing with other issues to be doing the checking on the factual output of a huge resource like Fox and how it is that they can continue to deliver less than authentic and checked information is beyond me and then that it just, and when it differs from the other news outlets who may have some corroborative commonality, they just take theirs as the truth. So we're up against some beliefs and attitudes and values that are in place and those are the tectonic plates of the brain and they move slowly if at all. And we just hope that at some point they will move a lot like they do in nature and there would be some new insight and considerations but we're just not getting that. Doesn't this play into our cultural divide of this country? Doesn't this play into why there's certain states right now that absolutely refuse to have a stay at home order for their citizens? These kinds of states, this cultural divide is dead set against prohibiting churches from holding church services and having parishioners shoulder to shoulder certainly within six feet of one another and being possible vectors of passing this virus along. Doesn't that say something about our cultural divide in this country where science is laid to rest and belief in Donald Trump, Fox News and our way of life and we are not submit to a virus now or any other day. What are we gonna do about that? Winston, why don't you take that on? Boy, it's a great question. I would encourage viewers to give a day of your life to Fox News, turn it on from the morning and just listen to it all day so you understand what half the nation is getting their news from. It is the most, I think number one news channel for is probably Hannity. Listen to see what the other side is saying and not even the other side, just Fox News. Listen to Rush Limbaugh all day. Listen to this talk radio which make your skin crawl but it's important to understand this other side and I would encourage other people to who maybe listen to Fox all day to put on MSNBC or even just watching CNN and CNN is the real one where you notice Donald Trump goes after CNN or NBC because these are really mainstream media, especially CNN. And so if you can attack CNN, you don't have to worry about MSNBC. He never talks about Rachel Maddow but he's worried about CNN because that is where people might become believers from there. So that's where the focus is. But I would say it does speak to this larger divide in our country, it speaks to the, we've seen this federalism complete where it's going to bid against the federal government or where they're also talking about building sort of cooperatives with each other. It's an interesting new reality that's been forged in this template that it's been forced on us but you know what, I think that a lot of these governors are just saying when you're giving lemonade, lemons make lemonade out of it. So it makes sense that they're having to go to these things because necessity is the mother of invention and I don't know that it's really stopped since 150 years about these things for those of us that may have a broader expansive vision of America that holds universal values. That may not be the case with half the nation I mean, say that's fine in your section of the country, your city, but that's not who we are in my town and we're seeing that at large here. Yeah, I mean Stephanie, here we got a case where we're trying to tamp down a virus that spreads like wildfire. It doesn't take much for it to take hold in communities. We're trying to use science to stop the death of fellow citizens here in this country yet we have some of these states, some of these culture divides. Again, a refusal to do so because it's our right to have our churches open and it's our right to practice our religion and it's our right to basically have parishioners ignore social distancing. What should we do about that? Should, cause we're all connected. We're all, you know, other than here in Hawaii or an island, basically mainland United States is all connected. Should rule and science take over cultural divide? What do you think? Well, again, we're up against the values, the attitudes of belief systems that are driving a lot of this, but this time there's gonna be, with no remedy there's gonna be a tremendous cost and it's gonna include death. And I think that we may see this even more than we're already seeing it now because they say that because the rural cases are so low there are only one or two out there in the rural states that, well, yeah, that means once this New York thing peaks we'll be able to, you know, get back to business. And the problem is of course without any attention to the scientific information that we have in just loads of and wonderful experts and institutions devoted to it we're gonna probably see what has happened in New York City, the doubling up the cases within a week and the same thing's gonna happen in the rural areas much less going into places like the Indian reservations which are pretty much still untouched at this point. And once that rolls there's no hospitals or very few there are no doctors out there. So once that opens up we are gonna have cataclysm in the rest of the country. So with us being divided and not united, how does the country help itself? And we have to help ourselves overcome that divide and that speaks to leadership. And we have not had the leadership that will pull us all together to get ready for these things we're getting ready for nothing. And in the daily briefing there's never anything said about uniting or getting things ready to meet increased needs. It's just all about it's all gonna go away, magical thinking but what is ahead of us is probably the worst. I mean, and that's even before we get to the second wave because the whole country hasn't been affected yet. So the timeline is not over. And one of the biggest concerns I have about that is if we are going to get this much promised inoculation, this way to get out from under having no protection, get the immunity the president and the leadership is not saying anything about how we're gonna get ready to deliver that. So what about if somebody had the shot tomorrow? Who's gonna deliver it? I mean, if we can't get masks and gowns and we can't take care of our patients and where's all the hypodermic needles? How are we gonna make that happen? So the futility of this daily briefing is so clear it's clear to me. It's not doing enough for us to either come together to support ourselves as fellow Americans or to get us ready to take this on. We still have not taken it on to these things. This may be the new federalism where it's a lack of a concerted effort by the federal government to act as it should right now. We're leaving it up to the States. Donald Trump has said so many, many times this is the state's responsibility. We're not in the business of getting your ventilators. We're not in the business of getting your personal protection equipment. We're just not in that business. Well, what business are we in? If that's not the business during this pandemic and this horrific loss of life. So I'm gonna leave it there. I just have one quick question and that is what were your thoughts about the Captain Crozier of the Teddy Roosevelt, the ship and his concern for his men and the spread of the virus and how he was reassigned that we're basically asked not to be captain anymore. And then the Navy Secretary's comments I believe his name is Thomas Mudley, his comments about Captain Crozier. Any thoughts about that before we call it a day? Winston? Well, yeah, Winston go ahead. I was just gonna say have a nephew who's a Navy pilot. This captain was a Hornet pilot for years. He is a jet fighter pilot. He's got this incredible background. It's not, he's not naive. I just wanted to make one, he is not naive. He knows the risks and that jeopardy. So go ahead, Winston, I'm sorry. I just had to say I'm afraid to speak back to you. He was trying to protect his troops. If you saw the video of him talking to his troops and the response that he had from them, he is looking after these people and he spoke truth to power and got fired for it. And then that messed up firing him, got fired. So because he made the Donald look bad. So it's tragic, but I'm heartened to see people trying to stand up and do the right thing. Even if they get, even if they have consequences, let's put this fellow on the speaking circuit from now on. He'll get standing ovations wherever he goes. There you go. He already got them from his own sealers. Yes. From his own sealers and that's it. No greater praise than that. No greater praise, fabulous. Well, I think Donald Trump felt that he was boxed into a corner. Donald Trump felt he was pushed into a corner on that because this captain did care about his men and he probably did go up the chain of command and nothing happened about it. So we don't know the facts about that just yet. That'll all come out in the wash. So until then, we'll have to wait and see. Yeah, it was the San Francisco Chronicle and they're not sure how it got leaked. But let me just say one thing that let's hope that we don't have to ask for this man to be included at the next State of the Union address, 21. Whoa, Stephanie, good point. That maybe we'll have somebody that will bring him on. Will. Maybe Rush Limbaugh will make an encore presentation. You never know. So, all right, well, God forbid. All right, so here's the deal. We're out of time. I'm gonna make another prediction and I have a funny feeling I'm gonna be proven correct. And that is next week is gonna be just as wild as this week, if not wilder. And unfortunately, we're gonna have exponential counts of the death toll and that's something that none of us want to see. And God bless America and just hope that we get through this with the least amount of deaths that are affecting our population. So Winston, thank you so much. Stephanie, thank you very much and we'll see you guys next week for Trump week. It's Wednesday, 11 o'clock. We'll see you then. Aloha.