 It's September the 16th. It's Wednesday. It's 11 o'clock. It's Trump week. I'm Tim Appachel, your host. And today's title is 100,000 COVID dead, nothing to be done. Well, that is the title. And that is going to be the subject is the response from Donald Trump regarding the COVID debacle and his recent words, his nine, 10 interviews with Bob Woodward and his responses to COVID or the lack of his response. Before I get to my guess, I'm going to go through a very quick timeline to kind of put things in perspective. You know, back in January 22nd, Donald Trump told CNBC that this was going to be totally under control. And this was all handled. And then on the 24th of January, he praised China on how well they have done with their COVID response and the transparency they provided to the rest of the world and praised them. And then on the 28th, this is a very, very important date is the National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien wrote to Donald Trump and told Donald Trump that this will be the biggest national security threat that will face your presidents. Then also then on 29th, this is a very important part is that Peter Navarro, who is the economic trade advisor to Donald Trump wrote a memo that this pandemic was going to be as on the same level as the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and there could be up to 500,000 lives lost. So that's a very important date because if we fast forward to March 19th, when he spoke with Bob Woodward, he was called to say, I wanted to play it down. I still like playing it down because I don't want to cause a panic. And then we'll fast forward to April the 12th, 2020, when the report came out that Donald Trump was advised by Peter Navarro that this virus, COVID-19, could potentially have 200, 400,000, 500,000 fatalities. And Donald Trump claimed he never saw that memo from Peter Navarro. Well, we know he did and we know the day before Peter Navarro wrote that memo, Robert O'Brien told him and wrote to him saying, we've got a problem here at Houston. So more denials and this is the crux of the issue is Donald Trump's seemingly inability to address COVID. And now we have 200,000 American deaths and the University of Washington projects that we could have up to 410,000 deaths by January 2021. Going to our guests. Good morning, everyone. Today our guests are Jay Fidel, Winston Welch, Stephanie Dalton, and Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Tim. Morning. Jay, right to you. You know, Donald Trump said, you know, I wanted to play it down. That's what I like to do. I'm a cheerleader. He says that a lot. I'm a cheerleader for this disease. I don't want to panic people. And then, of course, the most important quote that he said is, nothing more could have been done as if Donald Trump did everything he possibly could to attack this virus. We know that's not true. But does it make a difference? Does it make a difference to the public, to his voting loyal base? Has he lost some people in that loyal base because they are seniors? Your thoughts? Well, first, my first thought is that he hasn't done anything. And I remember, you know, day after day waiting for him to do something and it really never appeared. So for him to say that he could have done, that he did everything he could do is ridiculous, ridiculous. But the larger reaction I have to that, Tim, that this is a demagogue. He lies on a regular basis. We know that. And he gets away with it. And he somehow has this hypnotic, you know, cult-like relationship with this base where they buy it no matter what, even if it's very clear from all sources, including Fox News, that he is lying. An alternative reality. And that's the remarkable thing. There are two narratives, at least, going on in this country. One is the reality and the other is Donald Trump. And a lot of people buy into Donald Trump. And I think you cannot have a sustainable democracy when you have two competing narratives. It's like pots and pans banging against each other. You can't do anything. It's not just this issue. It's all issues. And it's Congress. The man is a destructive force. He's destroying our democracy by virtue of these competing narratives. And what I worry about is that we can evaluate, and I'm sure we will here today, you know, what it looks like in terms of the pure vote. But you've got to remember that he's a demagogue and he's affecting people every day, taking every step he can take to try to, you know, change or undermine or suppress their votes or the process of voting. The end of the day, even if there is an overwhelming vote in favor of Biden, Biden may not win. And even if Biden wins, there's going to be a problem, Houston. There's going to be people in the street who have, you know, upheaval. And that upheaval could lead us far away from democracy. So, you know, what I think we have here is the likelihood that Trump will convince people through this cult mechanism he has of black is white, white is black. And he will somehow stay in office. And the real problem for us and for anyone thinking about it is what do we do in the new time? How do we address this problem? What do we say now to minimize this problem? I know that goes beyond your question, but that's my reaction. No, that's okay, because it leads into this question. That is, okay, we have the things that are the obvious. I mean, it's reality versus non-reality. Nothing more could have been done, yet we see Donald Trump at his rallies, be it back in Tulsa, where Herman Cain was and most likely contracted COVID that ended his life, or it'd be in Nevada or California, where they're packed in. They have no masks. His audience has no masks. And he's on a stage. He's well protected. What do you mean nothing more can be done? That's the thing that I can't get my arms around is that it's obvious that he doesn't care to what extent this thing spreads. What am I missing here? What am I missing here, Jay? All this morning, sometime in October, they're going to have the football season start. And I don't know that he could do something. He could not have the football season. He could do something. He could not open the schools. He could do something and allow the various governors to call for their citizens to wear masks. He hasn't done anything. In fact, in fact, to make the lie all the more shattering is that he's actually discouraging people from doing anything. He's 180 out on this. So for him to say that he's done everything he could do is outrageous. Okay, thank you. Hey, which I'm going to go to you on this because yesterday was a town hall meeting with George Stephanopoulos. Donald Trump kind of led the cat out of the bag as far as what his philosophy is and has been. And that was that he said the virus is going to go away no matter what with or without a vaccine. And he misstated and misspoke about calling it a herd mentality versus our herd immunity. Is that what we've been dealing with since January is that Donald Trump has quietly and secretly adopted a herd immunity approach to COVID-19. And that's why he seemingly hasn't done anything about giving hospitals their PPEs or slowed down the testing or not having contact tracing and certainly not encouraging mask wearing. In fact, discouraging mask wearing. You know, is this a conspiracy theory that I'm dealing with here that Donald Trump really all along has had secretly desired to have a herd immunity approach to COVID? Well, I don't think he has any approach, but one to lie and deceive the American public who are we can take the truth. But I think that was a Freudian slip for herd mentality talking about his own followers and saying, you know, they will run off the cliff. And sadly, because these are our friends, our family, our neighbors, it's pain for us to see the grief and the shame that he brings upon the nation and himself and also that they are so duped and feel like we are. You think about it, what was the outrage of last week? Do you remember the title of the show? Suckers and losers. The military dead. Military dead. That is so last week. That doesn't even register on people's radar. Now we've had this massive book by Bob Woodward coming out saying, you know, hey, this guy knew all this along. We're going to have some more revelations came out. And there's an article in the New York magazine, I believe it was, and in the New York intelligence, why Woodward's book won't break through. And it just talks about that there is, by this date, Trump's indifference to matters of life and death have long since been baked into most voters verdict on this president. He's brazenly showcasing, casing his immutable callousness and narcissism in public view, violating local mandates, et cetera. So for his base, it may not matter, but at some point, there may be something that's just snaps in someone just this. I want to hit that point right there. I want to hit that point right there because you said something just a little bit ago about, he might have had a Freudian slip about how he refers to his voters, his base. And that's the herd, the herd mentality. I don't know if you caught this or if the rest of you caught this or not, but he was approached by a reporter that had social distance and she said, are you concerned about catching this? He said, no, I'm not concerned because I'm way up here on the stage and my crowd is way down there on the floor. Yeah, his crowd's way down on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, and no one has a mask on. So I mean, he clearly talked about a disdain for their safety, but he's protected because he's way up on the stage. He clearly doesn't have any respect for their well-being and basically their safety. I don't know if anyone caught that or not, but I found it jaw-dropping yet again. Oh, it's amazing because the very people that he's purporting to be a better supporter, he's cut off food stamps or unemployment, whatever it is, and they don't realize that this is impacting them directly, there is such a cognitive disconnect going on in this country that it's hard to wrap your head around. And I don't know how and when people wake up. There's seemingly nothing that he can do. Sometimes I think we've been pumped these last four years and he's been like that, trying to get out of office since before he even got in and just has one more outrageous thing after another, but this has just read me to the base and I don't know where, how, when, what triggers them, but we are not really going for that. His ratings have been absolutely rock solid the entire time of his administration through every single everything as far as the lows and the highs, and that is just reality. So you really are going after that 14,000 people in Wisconsin. What is their messaging that they really need to hear? And I think the Democrats are wildly focused on finding those 14,000 people and flipping them over on whatever topic gets to them, whether it's veterans or illness or the economy or who knows what lies. All righty. Thank you Winston. Cynthia, your comments about what you witnessed or what you've been hearing from the audio tapes that Bob Woodward has been playing and I guess part of it, we may have this drip, drip, drip kind of scenario between now and election day. I mean, he has hours and hours of audio tapes that Donald Trump opines about all sorts of things. So your opinion about how he wanted to downplay it and he always likes to downplay the virus. To what degree does that stick with some of the voters? In fact, I think some of the poll numbers are shifting a little bit and he's losing some of the 65 plus crowd. And I don't know if that's in Florida or what specific state. I don't know if that's in the Midwest as a generic sampling, but he is losing some of his older base. Well, I would hope so. I would think that, well, I don't really understand how anyone supports him still. Because I don't see how anyone can look past the lies. I don't care if you get judges, I don't care if you get policy. This goes so far beyond policy and partisanship that people are dying. Hundreds of thousands of people are dying. And this is no slight on 9-11, but we lost what, 5,000 people? And here almost 20 years later, we still mourn those people, but we're not mourning our 200,000 that are dying today, every day. And in that George Stephanopoulos town hall, you were talking about a minute ago. He actually, when he was confronted on downplaying it by one of the people that was there to question him. And he said, I never downplayed this. I never said I downplayed it. If anything, I upplayed it. Now, I'm not quite sure how you could upplay anything, but it's also a ridiculous example of how disconnected he is from reality. He said here, to all the governors here, it's on your heads, it's on your shoulders, you do it, until he wanted something done. And then he said, oh, you have no say, I'm going to do whatever I want. And so there's this dichotomy of stuff that he's putting out there. And it is straight out of a playbook, a dictator's playbook, or even just a narcissist playbook, where they tell you something over and over and over and they gaslight you to the point where you no longer trust your own feelings. You no longer trust what the truth is. And that's, I think, how he holds on to his base. Okay. Yeah. Thank you so much on that, Cynthia. Stephanie, let me ask you this. Cynthia just mentioned the word gaslighting. And the question is, if he continues as he does to gaslight about COVID or be at the fires out in California and Oregon, or the imagined boogeyman that's coming to the suburbs of Wisconsin and the Midwest, and it's only he is the protector that will keep the boogeyman from coming out into the suburbs. If he continues to gaslight, does he get a fair shake from the media? Does he get the use of bully pulpit? And the reason I asked is because I desperately tried to find the show, the town hall meeting with George Stephanopoulos on CNN, MSNBC, even ABC, and I couldn't find it. So I'm not sure if that was even covered. What do you think about that? I was wondering where that was to and why only excerpts were run and we're not informed as to where the show is. Is that a direct result of their tired of gaslighting and why give them the microphone if that's all he's going to do? Well, it'll come out because the other journalists will find it. We'll find out about it surely. There can't be anything happening in the country that's not on tape and it's going to be available many, many times over. But we're so ill-served by this man and as all these comments are so on the point and well taken. I mean, it is all like aghast at what's happening. But to me, it raises my regard for Mary Trump of the Trump family because these people are now stepping up to to validate that what we're seeing is in fact what he is and he's a disaster and he has been since childhood and he has no capacity to do the kinds of things. We keep asking why. So no questions about why it's patently clear. We could have selected the 10-year-old from the best elementary schools around and just put a volunteer in for president. What more do we need if this is going to continue on? The other point is just imagine if he was in your family, you know, taking responsibility for this is what we've created and now it's on you and we're sorry about that and here's why it all happened and try to help explain it. But the other comment that I keep hearing is for like people from Colorado and the states that are kind of iffy. It's about the open carry and it's about abortion. And so they think that, you know, these are important and that somebody's out there going to take it away. But I mean, as far as the guns go, go buy a gun. You want a gun? Go buy it. I mean, there's no problem with that and it's in the Constitution. But anyway, so that seems to be at the level of our rule following as a nation to get through this man's chance as a four-year president and to give him the best chance for him to do the best he can. Well, we've seen it. Okay, so yes, we have. We have to and I would say before you could have rule following, you got to make sure the rules still exist. And I'm not sure after four years just how many of them are valid anymore and that that can even be enforced with this guy. So anyway, okay, Stephanie, thank you so much. And Jay, I want to go to you. You know, we have these horrific fires out in Oregon and California and Donald Trump was at a roundtable get together. And the question was, you know, we've got a climate change environment here and his snarky response to the individual that mentioned that was, it'll get cooler, just watch. And then that individual said, well, I wish the science would agree with that. And he said, the science doesn't know everything. Did you happen to cast that remark? I did. That was an outrage. And then he moved on. When that fellow who was a natural resources in Oregon, I think, or California, made those comments to him, asked those questions, he shut them up and moved on to someone else. That's what he does at the press conferences too. But in his response, if you will, to all these fires, which are really a disaster and a clear statement of climate change is completely lacking. He doesn't admit the science. He doesn't admit climate change, even when you have not only fires, but storms in the East Coast that are unprecedented. And then he blames someone else. Even though the federal government owns like two thirds of the land involved in these fires, he says, as long as the states, they didn't do good forest management. They should have gotten in there and swept up the leaves. That's, it's their fault. Well, isn't it a good point to be made that these, oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. I'm just also saying that meanwhile, he hasn't really done a response. He hasn't provided a emergency funds and all those brownshirts that he sent into Portland. Okay. Where are they? They're not on the fire, the fire lines. They're not helping. So, you know, this, this kind of emergency thing only applies to when he considers an emergency, but not when it's a real emergency. This really awful what's happening in the West and he's not doing anything about it. Well, I, I, I really kind of go back to that raking, raking the forest, you know, if I'm not mistaken, I think in Oregon and California, most of those lands are federal lands. Doesn't that fall into the federal government for maintenance? Yeah. It's his own fault. But you know, if you're going to tell me he's lying, I am not surprised. He lies about everything, every word out of it. You know, the whole thing, how can you tell when he's lying, his lips are moving. And so this is another lie. And the tragic thing about these competing narratives in our country now is that there are a lot of people who believe everything he says. They don't care if a case can be made that he's lying. And this is going to lead us to a disaster. Agreed. Okay. Thank you, Jay, for your comment. Hey, Winston, we have been fortunate enough to receive a question from one of our viewers. So I'd like to read that right now. Here's the question or for instance, a comment, I think, and then the question. We continually talk about how outrageous Trump is and how unprecedented his actions are. Yet we stand by with disbelief and feel helpless to do anything. What practical steps can we take as voting citizens to take action and change this narrative? The ranting is getting exhausting. We need practical steps to take action. Any ideas? So thank you, whoever wrote this. It's a very good question. And Winston, I'm going to put that in your court. Well, you know what? It's a great question, but maybe it comes down to the personal. People are telling me they can't watch the news anymore because it doesn't matter. You feel like you've got to fact check the news now. There are many reliable news sources, but if you're being told by Fox, this is the news, or by Donald Trump, and like Jay just said, you're willing to believe that. And what I would love to have on here is a mass psychologist, a psychologist of mass movements and how they happen and how to explain what has happened in our nation that we can be so willing to fall for this. That might help in how do you deprogram people, but it may be a personal level. It may be reaching out to people in maybe not just borderline states or the toss-up states, but in our own families and say, this is how this affects me. And if nothing else, aren't you sick of talking about it now? And don't you miss in America where we can trust in our governments and believe what our leaders say? I mean, just some very basic things about, you know, my grandchildren have said, he's lying, mommy. You know, why is he lying? And you have to explain them. Yeah, he lies about everything. And he said, but he's a leader. He shouldn't lie. Those types of things should really resonate with people on some fundamental level. Like, how do we get beyond that? But I mean, the outrageous things he says, it's just, it doesn't matter. Like, I don't know how you reach people except to tell them, yeah, you know, you're, this is how it affects me personally. Maybe that's the most effective way at this point, but we need a mass deep programming as well, just so that we can get back and restore our faith in government. I mean, he was saying in Nevada that he deserves another four years because he was probably entitled to it. And so eight more years and you think about that. At least the CDC director, there's things coming out at the deep state, right? Says that we're not going to have the most Americans won't have a vaccine until the middle of next year. So there are dribs and grabs coming out that people are realizing, you know what, the CDC FDA, while it's still been tarnished, there's good people in there that are actually trying to get out the truth that says you're not going to get a vaccine before this. Yeah, no, I've heard the reality show has actually been playing lately and it's been a good one. And yes, about the virus. Okay. Hey, Cynthia, before I ask you this question again, that I just asked Winston, I'm going to, I'm going to quote Barack Obama, President Obama, about this question. And that is what practical steps can be taken to quote Obama. Don't get mad. Vote. Well, you know me, you need to do more than just vote. You need to make sure if you mail in your ballot and you have a way to track it, track it, keep track of it, make sure you know that it goes all the way through and gets counted. Don't just stick your ballot in the mail, physically take it to your election office, do those kind of specific things, and to sort of speak to the person who sent in the question. It's so important that we stay informed during this time. By the same token, it's important to take a break, to come away from it. I don't watch any news on the weekends, none. I only watch good-feeling movies on Netflix and Amazon. And some of the newer stuff, the political stuff that's coming out like unfit, which is an extremely in-depth look at some of the things that Trump has been doing and addresses some of his psychological reasons behind it. And I think another way to understand all of this is to look at what happened in Germany in 1930. We can follow how the people were and how they fell prey to it, and how they fell prey to this same kind of gaslighting that's happening right now. So that would be my thing. Practical advice, okay. Take care of yourself, too. Alrighty. Thank you so much, Cynthia. Stephanie, you have any advice, practical advice? I think this is a very good question, and I am taking a left turn from the agenda here that we had for today, but this is a really good question. And what practical advice can or steps can we take to get beyond the disbelief of Donald Trump and our outrage to it, and what practical steps can we take between now and November the 3rd? Well, good question. And I appreciate having that. And this is a good, our whole experience here is a good civic lesson for us. And we're learning about our government. I agree with Cynthia about what she's saying. I find Winston's comments always healing and promising, but I don't see it as a matter of waking these people up, because they'll always be there. And we will, they are our neighbors and and relatives, and we have to learn to live with people have a totally different perspective on this thing. So they're going to be there. Now they happen to be empowered than even though they're in a minority. So we do have to contend with with that and learn better how to communicate and work together. But most importantly, we need to do what the Republicans have done. And that's why we have Donald Trump. Because what have they done? They've gerrymandered, they've taken every level, the judges are conservative, we're going to get to a point where there won't even be any birth control. I guess we just use the Trump birth control method, which is don't get the frank pregnancy test, right? But I think that, you know, if we don't start enacting every level of our governmental system and our tools that make make it work, the levers, we're going to be continuing with this and we're not going to be anything anymore. So just like what the Republicans have done, they've been very, very ambitious and smart about commandeering all of these levers and a very good example is, of course, the gerrymandering. They're already working on it again to try and keep the census less than we really are so that they'll still have control over the money that's going out and who's going to get it. So it just runs right up from civic level in the cities and counties and rural and testing and counting there, right on up to having our whole country run by a Republican judges who have no court experience and have never even tried a case. But they have the right credentials. So I recommend that we learn from this and take the civics lesson that somehow our schools have neglected to give us enough of and start to get busy to support the work at those levels that will give us who we want to be our governors. All right. Excellent points, Stephanie. Everyone, excellent points. Unfortunately, we've run out of time as usual. I was going to go around and ask you for predictions for next week, but we'll have to wait until next week on that. So I want to thank you, Jay Fidel, Winston Welch, Stephanie Dalton, Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Thanks for joining us on Trump week. See us next week. I'm Tim Appichell, your host, Aloha, everybody.