 Okay, it's Wednesday. That means it's Trump week. And I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Think Tech. And today we have two of our hosts who join us. We have Stephanie Dalton, and we have Winston Welsh, both hosts of other shows on Think Tech. I'm going to talk about Trump week this morning. Let me say that we're also we're also designing a jingle about Trump week. And we'll be rolling that out soon. We don't know exactly what the words of music are, but it will sound like Gilbert and Solomon. I assure you. Good morning, Stephanie. Good morning, Jay. It's a pleasure to be here with you. Looking forward to the conversation. And Winston, good morning to you. Good morning. How are you doing? Let's go through what's happened this week. I mean, it's been a I suppose, I suppose if I had to pick the, you know, the top-down news, it would be Trump's missteps on coronavirus and and his remarkable egotistical narcissistic statements about it, which were written up in today's paper, The New York Times, an opinion piece. So can we talk about that? Who wants to go first? Stephanie, you go first. What do you think about Trump and the coronavirus? How is he comporting himself on that critical deadly issue? Well, I feel that he's not living up to his proclaimed genetic heritage. He has his MIT scientific uncle who has degrees from on these topics and he's drawing on that knowledge base. And we'd like to see more of that. Yeah, genetic knowledge. We'd like to hear much more about about that and of it and apply and how he's going to apply it. So hopefully things are improving somewhat given we are moving the test kits out, the diagnostic kits. But what still is amazing to me is that don't we have like 260 million people in the country and they're delayed it over the delivery of a million kits throughout the country. So maybe I don't myself know enough about how the testing goes on. But perhaps there's a sample and it's not a whole population effort. But it seems like we're still woefully behind the curve of the virus. So in a larger context, Winston, you know, what has he been telling us? I mean, the role of the president in a time of unmitigated crisis. You heard it here. Unmitigated crisis is a very special role. What is that role and is he living up to it? Well, you know, I did love an opinion piece in the New York Times. It says which side is administration on based on every public appearance we've seen. It's not the public's. And when you're concerned about getting reelected when you're concerned about massaging numbers, when you're concerned about keeping people in line when they really need to be telling the truth, this is not the hallmark of a free society. This is not the hallmark of a well run government. I was appalled to see, I think it was the CDC director last week when they were having a news conference. And he said the first things out of his mouth were, I just want to thank the president for his excellent leadership on this issue and something to that effect. And I thought, you don't need to be a sycophant right now. You need to step up and let the American people know what steps do they need to take to protect themselves, their families, their businesses, their environments. So for me, it's everybody that's that's connected with this administration gets tainted and corrupted. And there's a there's certainly are good people in our government that are that are there and saying, I'm going to try and make a difference as long as they can. And then they either succumb or get kicked out or cross him. I saw today that the the fellow from the head of the CDC said, actually, it is a problem. And the bill it was that the wall shouldn't will not keep out the virus. So he's directly contradicted the president. So I wonder how long he'll have a job. But yeah, I think it's it's scary when you have people making policy decisions to please the leader, rather than to serve the people that's been happening for three years. But but queries, Stephanie, you know, what are the stakes here? You know, the point is that if you have missteps, and if you fail to do things that you should do, and if you spend all the time patting yourself on the back rather than saving lives, then lives are lost. My own view is that he has cost a lot of people their lives already, by not taking steps he should have been taking but not focusing. What are your thoughts about that? Well, I see it as a huge irony. I think that all of his efforts to contain or distract or deflect are ending up increasing the effects of the downside of having this virus in our world now. So in every way that he's held held back on getting those kids out if indeed he was involved in that, I'm not sure I can understand that our CDC in Atlanta, with the world's top scientists and medical researchers could not have seen that they needed to count from the get go on this virus's parents. They surely would have been almost unable to control their need to start counting and data collection for the virus even while it was still in China. So I don't quite understand why they have been so low profile in all of this. You know, Winston, it was an article in I think the Washington Post about the process that took place in the state of Washington and that care home in Washington. Yeah. And the people who reported on it laid it squarely on the CDC for telling the medical authorities in Washington that they could not rely on data they had they had accumulated prior to a CDC approval of the laboratory, the laboratory process or something along those lines. It was so gross. And as a result, in a time where every day means lives, the state of Washington lost two or three weeks waiting on the federal government, you hear about that? Well, it seems like our whole country has lost probably two or three weeks. And we had a chance. I mean, China's been the first thing came out with some of the end of December. And we can see the trajectory and they really, you know, they've had their share of mistakes. And I don't know that that we can trust all the news coming out there or even if we do that it's correct news, but we can see patterns. We could look at Singapore or we could look at Taiwan. And they they responded very differently to this threat and said, we're going to be in front of this, we're going to try and contain it as best as we can. It's harder in our country, granted. But when you don't have leadership from the top that when you don't have the preparedness that the pandemic preparedness force that was dismantled by this administration, you really don't your your processes aren't in place. So these kids should have this as soon as they knew about what these kids where they should have started manufacturing them and mass and distributing them everywhere. And I realized our guidelines were something like, Oh, have you traveled over season, this sort of thing. But the reality is, if you were starting to present with things, and maybe they were concerned about people flooding the offices, but they, we there's still a chance that we can, they're not talking containment anymore in a lot of places. But in some places they might be able to still have some containment. But these kids from what I understand are not as readily available as it's being made out to be true. Not even in Hawaii. So so you can't test the poll population, you don't know many cases you have. You don't know who's infecting who whom. And as a result, you have more deaths coming down the pike. And my question to you, Stephanie, is do you think the people in the red states, you think the base understands this, or are they still buying into what he's saying about, you know, his genetic knowledge, you know, is a great concern for the country that lives are being and will be lost increasingly. And you know, it's irremediable. It's the things out of control and Trump is responsible for it. You think this will reach the base? And do you think it will have an effect on the election? It's a, it's a great concern. And the, the trust that people have placed in, in this leader is not in their best interest. So how long will it take them to get back to the fake news where there's actually some unfake, important information that will help them save their lives and the lives of their families. I think it's all coming to a head at this point. So as I've heard, that this might be the Trump Katrina, because of these misleading statements and misinformation and things that are not helpful. And actually, But even if it is that you're you got to think that it's a New York Times reported the Reuters that the Democrats were twice as likely to view this as an imminent threat as Republicans. So we're getting very different news sources here. And it will be spun in such a way that this is some sort of liberal liberal plot, right? And already has been against the administration when in fact, this is not it's not a plot. It's just trying to keep folks safe. And when you have people getting news from such sources, it's no wonder that they're distorted and and doing the sense that the time says doing the president's bidding in rather than containing the virus making this some sort of hoax, as it were. So I, I, you know, you have to think of where has this virus been hitting hard? Recently, it's been hitting hard in Boston, in California and Washington. These are states that, arguably, maybe they're not on the favorite list. And so the response might not have been as as hard as if it were in Texas or, you know, Florida or or Michigan or some other states where it might have elicited a stronger response. And I don't like to think that way. But what's happened is that you mentioned trust, Stephanie, is that the trust in our institutions is going down daily when we realize this is all these, all of these have become politicized when it's just basic science. But when you have an administration that doesn't believe in science, that puts Mike Pence in charge of this response, where his last response to an epidemic in his own state as governor was disastrous. There's not a lot of hope in something like that. So maybe we will see some experts stepping up and taking over and just hopefully we can say that the administration will just step aside and let the experts do their work unfettered. I don't have a lot of confidence in that, but I am hoping that it does happen. I was just going to point out that Stephanie, you know, the other side of this is a priorities issue. You know, when Trump saw that the stock market had, you know, essentially crashed, he decided he was going to spend his time and effort trying to get the stock market to rebound and to try to help the economy more specifically help help, you know, the business side of the economy rather than any other side. And so, you know, he was taking or recommending steps that were not necessarily intended to help people survive, to help beat back the virus, but to, you know, return the economy to normal. Is that the right priority? Is that defendable? It's his tactic. So it's that. And then with the ships that wanted some help, I mean, he just wants to keep the numbers down. So he just wants the surface features to be controlled under, get control of the surface features so that he can continue his messages, which are dead, very deadly in how they mislead those who are going to listen to that and not check other other sources. So I don't see that his tactics or if it's strategy is working for him anymore, it's all coming around, turning around the irony, as I said earlier, of what he's tried so hard to do to keep it contained. Lowering the discount rate, it strikes me as something that assumes that the health side of this will all be fine in a few months. That's going to go away. What we really need to do is focus on the economy. You agree with that, Winston? Well, the economy is obviously going to be, I can't think of any other word than devastated, at least seriously negatively impacted. I saw the paper today said 10 percent down, but I also read that United, I think it was United Delta report, like 70 percent off of their web booking. So we're in a state that's so dependent on tourism. I can't imagine that it's only going to be a 10 percent hit in our economy here. And that's going to be reverberated across, you know, everywhere, unless you're Netflix or Amazon or Costco, then you're sitting very pretty right now. But a lot of people, a lot of pain, a lot of hurt. So whatever this administration purports that it can do for the everyday man and woman out there, whether it's a payroll tax cut or whether it's some sort of direct to consumer, you know, Tom, not Tom, sorry, Andrew Yang sort of payout because these people don't have health care. So what choice are you going to make? Are you going to self quarantine for two weeks because someone that was at the banquet where you were serving got sick? Or are you not going to say anything and just report to your other job? You know, these are hard choices that people have to make. They have to pay their rent. They have to buy food. And when you don't have a job and you don't have, you may not have health care. Or if you've been working minimum wage, like 40 percent of the people in the state of Hawaii, this is a very serious issue. And if they if they are the pro business pro consumer administration, more power to them. I just would like to see a very hefty lift here. And as I say, there's there's no libertarians in the in pandemics because everybody wants a government response because it's really the only thing that can meaningfully affect the entire outcome of everything. We got to continue to follow this and we'll follow it perhaps some more at 12 o'clock noon when we do our Corona Watch program and go further on these issues. But let's let's talk about other things that have happened this week. I mean, for example, I mean, it's not nearly as important as coronavirus, but Trump cut a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan without including the Afghan government. And now that seems to be unraveling, but maybe not. Stephanie, what do you know about this and what can we say about the Afghan quote peace agreement and quote? Well, the Afghan peace agreement is troubled and there's issues of prisoner release and agreements that they made in order to work on it more. And there's not cooperation from some parties. But one of the big issues that's come out has to do with the international criminal court that has authorized investigation into the problems that have evidently been there and have avoided investigation. And these are the alleged war crimes that have been committed by U.S. military people and CIA and also the Taliban. And in addition to the ICC or international criminal courts, authorization for this investigation to go forward, an appeals court has also ruled in favor of opening an investigation. And this has been very infuriating for and that's quote unquote infuriating for the Secretary of State and the administration since they've been deterring this opening of an investigation for a long time. And obviously if we could get out of there fast, maybe we could avoid what this investigation might reveal. But it looks like there's some forces at work now to get down to finding out what does it mean and are there indictments and is there due diligence on this? Like everything else, the Middle East is in a transformation. And for example, you know, people treat Iran as, well, one of the most powerful nations in the area. We dump on them all the time. We break out peace agreements with them and all that. But they're sick and their people are very unhappy. And in fact, some of a number of the senior managers, senior officials of Iran are sick with coronavirus. This has an effect on the country, the political will and so forth. And on top of that, this Taliban agreement seems to be unraveling. Although I read this morning that the government of Afghanistan had agreed to respect the release of prisoners, which was part of the agreement. So Winston, I mean, how is the Middle East doing now in light of Trump's mismanagement of these various relationships? It's hard to know where to start with a lot of things. Syria was a complete disaster and will continue to be. And now as we're seeing Turkey's just saying, we're letting folks right through to Europe, there's going to be a lot of repercussions with that. With Afghanistan, you know, I have maintained that if he could extricate us from that war in a meaningful way and bring some sort of peace to that land where our forces are not put at risk anymore, maybe they leave in some Delta forces or something. I don't know. But if he can accomplish that, I'm going to give him kudos for that. If he can pull us out of that, that is something that has not happened in all of the past many, many years of everybody else. I think they probably realize nothing's going to happen. That's going to happen. I mean, you say if it would happen, everybody would be happy for the peace of it. But is it happening? It doesn't seem to me that it's happening. You know, it's such a mess over there that we'll find out in about six months or a year. I mean, more scary is those countries with no resources in Pakistan right next door, wait till the coronavirus really hits there. Then they won't be really so worried about who's shooting who as just staying indoors and not touching everybody and everything. It's going to be real interesting to see when it spreads there because it inevitably will. What about the understandings of the agreement about what's going to happen after we're gone? I mean, is that like hands off if the U.S. pulls out and then we're right back to the same situation that that to conceive to the 9-11 situation? So I think is our responsibility or obligation to fix whatever caused that or what were factors in that occurrence. Have we met the criteria for solving or fixing that? I don't see any larger plan. Oh, well, let's get out. Let's get out. But then what have we accomplished by getting out? We have to come right back in again. Yeah, it's the old story. It's true. But there's let's not pretend that there's not going to be American intelligence and missiles that can be remotely fired from Florida when certain intelligence is received. There's America is not retreating in a meaningful way, I think, from the world stage. It looks like it in certain circumstances, but there's too many vested interests for that to happen. So I don't really see that happening. But maybe as far as more troops on the ground type of thing, it seems like everybody's agreed. Let's let's pull that back for now. That'd be my guess. Okay, I mean, almost everybody. Well, let's talk about back at home, you know, we had the Mueller report, which went nowhere. And here on Trump week, we predicted it would go nowhere. We predicted that at the early part of it. And then we had, of course, the impeachment, you know, all about Russian manipulation and all that. And it looks like Putin is going to be the president for life in Russia. This is not good news. And then, you know, we have now Mr. Barr, who's the worst attorney general in the history of the United States is involved as Trump's stooge in investigating Joe Biden. Of course, that's because Joe Biden is the front runner. And that investigation is proceeding. And apparently they can do that even though they froze out the Democrats on the impeachment investigation. So what do you think of that? I mean, where does that fit in terms of Trump's popularity and in terms of, you know, the election, I suppose, Stephanie? Well, I wanted to share my feeling about that, which is the American public has exonerated the Bidens, as far as I can see. And I thought that is what, or at least the Democrats that are in the in this primary, right? They have exonerated Biden so that bringing back that whole investigative business isn't going to make a dent in anybody's intention to vote in the election. So I think that things have changed on that front. I think that that precocious, that precociousness or precience on Trump's part that he saw Biden as his greatest threat is interesting. So now he's going to have to face him. And I think this major tool that he had lever to get him out of the way is not going to work anymore. Of course, we have the rest of the people that are listening to the leader instead of the news. But anyway, so we'll see, even no matter that there is more investigation, where can they go? It's kind of like that Hillary Clinton and Benghazi, how much more? Don't you think Winston is the height of audacity to claim that you've been exonerated by two investigations now and then investigate the guy who, you know, was exonerated? You know, this exactly plays to Donald Trump's fans. And there is fans. They're his people. They are his fans are his fan base. And they're fanatics about him. When they hear this, it's it's read me to them, they truly believe that this is the right thing to do. And let's face it, Joe Biden's son and the Trump children, they probably wouldn't have gotten where they were if it weren't for their their their parents. So you can see some sort of stink that goes all the way around. That said, the stink is a lot less on one side. As far as I can tell, one person is sane and not a megalomaniac who's not doesn't have the best interests of our nation at heart. He has his own best interests at heart. And I want to you know, I want to think well about all people. And I do hope that the president makes the right decisions right now for in so many areas and just says it is not about me. I am the president. I'm already the highest person in the world. So now that I have this, let me use this as a platform for good rather than self aggrandizement. I've been saying that since before he was elected. But I my my hopes have not been realized just yet. He has not, you know, ascended to a higher plane, maybe a lower one. There's always hope and we can we can we can hope for that. And we can, like Nancy Pelosi says, sends our prayers and pray for the president. But you know, also keep our feet moving like the Quakers say, pray and move your feet so that we're we're making contingency plan. We have alternate structures. We're working to keep up our our democracy, our freedoms, our well on that notion, Winston, one of the things we predicted here on Trump week is that between the exoneration in the Senate and the election, Trump is going to attack the press. And indeed, he is attacking the press. Most recently, there was a story multiply reported in multiple publications about how he wanted to pull the license, the broadcasting license of MSNBC, because he doesn't like them. And of course, his affair with Fox News is is, you know, disgusting on a First Amendment basis. And finally, he sued the New York Times and he sued the Washington Post for defamation, because they claimed that, you know, that that state he claimed that statements were made that he had had encouraged Russia to manipulate in our election, which seems to me has proven true anyway. But what we have here is a is at the beginning of a six or eight month attack on the press. Where does that go? This is very troubling, don't you think? It's what's been going on for for since the before this before the election ever four years ago. So I just see it accelerating. And it is very troubling because if you can sue and get a newspaper to go out of business, hopefully you'd have other people pop up. But when it's when that's your doors are shut down because of a lawsuit. And when you're when the courts are being increasingly will call it stacked with with people friendly to your views. And they view that press as an enemy of the state. Then, you know, what do you do with enemies? Well, you then that gives you a free pass to lying all day, which is what we're seeing. Stephanie, I was just going to say quickly that he has had no consequences to date. And enormous gargantuan efforts have been made to give him consequences. And until he has some of those, nothing is going to change. However, if these numbers keep going and he might get consequences from Mother Nature, and he may get consequences from people that finally wake up and won't go to the rallies. So he can show up the rally and there'll be nobody there. So there's a consequence. So I think that consequences are going to be on their way. And of course, the big consequence could be in November. And where we do what the impeachment process said was supposed to be done, the American people decide. This is a critical thinking question for the whole country, including the base. Stephanie Dalton, Winston Welles, thank you so much for joining us on Trump Week. We'll see you shortly for Corona Watch. Thanks so much. Aloha.