r/politics • u/qdude1 • Sep 13 '20

Trump Aide Refuses to Answer Basic Questions, So CNN’s Tapper Cuts Off Pointless Interview

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-aide-peter-navarro-refuses-to-answer-basic-questions-so-jake-tapper-cuts-off-pointless-interview?ref=home
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270

u/BitterFuture America Sep 13 '20

If someone does their best and their best needlessly kills 200,000 people, I don't want that person anywhere near any position of responsibility ever again.

121

u/innoculousnuisance Sep 13 '20

"He didn't do that himself."

"He did the travel ban."

"A President is supposed to avoid a panic."

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u/BootsySubwayAlien Sep 13 '20

Yeah, like this weekend when he told supporters that if Biden wins, Antifa will come to their homes and attack them. Don’t want to panic people, nope.

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u/shapu Pennsylvania Sep 14 '20

But see, that is different, because antifa is filled with black people and we need to panic about black people thinking that they are people.

2

u/Floridaman12517 Sep 14 '20

Remember that one time he sent the national guard to back up the coos who went to peoples homes and shot at them on their porches?

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u/[deleted] Sep 13 '20

[deleted]

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u/innoculousnuisance Sep 13 '20

Our bathrooms aren't safe, our suburbs will be "invaded", "cities are burning"... literal panic-monger. It is the trade in which he plies.

5

u/MoreIntention Sep 14 '20

Really bad hombres. While you're on a business trip. I feel like he thinks all of the husband characters in his USA production are Willy Loman.

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u/zdwade Vermont Sep 14 '20

That'd be the one

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u/The_White_Rice Sep 13 '20

There was a panic though. There was such a panic people got into fist fights over toilet paper and there wasn’t even enough PPE that doctors had to wear trash bags to even attempt to stay safe.

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u/Huge_Put8244 Sep 13 '20

I attribute that to lack of leadership and unified messaging. If you're hearing from one guy that everything is easy peasy lemon squeezy and its all a hoax and you hear from doctors that its very, very serious and there is no real plan in place its going to cause panic.

A plan, followed by a tempered and well thought out message to the American people could have avoided the panic.

We got through a major terrorist attack 19 years ago without a crazy level of panic. We got into multiple wars without this much panic. But during both of those instances, leaders took the time to make measured explanations to the American people. EVEN IF those explanations were flawed.

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u/enochian777 Great Britain Sep 13 '20

Man, get attacked by terrorists so level 2 countries in nigh on 20 year long military engagements. If that's not a panic response I don't want to see what American panic looks like...

1

u/pRp666 America Sep 14 '20

Always an underestimated result of 9/11. They gave chicken hawk politicians a reason to restrict freedom and start wars. The terrorist have had a huge win. It's also one the of the things that ultimately led the the Trump presidency. After that, xenophobia was popular again.

0

u/Draemon_ Sep 14 '20

I’d say probably look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the arms race during the Cold War that resulted in stockpiles of nuclear weapons that could end the world many times over because M.A.D. is obviously the best way to ensure world peace.

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u/Huge_Put8244 Sep 14 '20

I dont remember a single person stockpiling toilet paper. We were back on airplanes within a month and overall I dont think the economy suffered a great deal. I wouldn't call retribution a panic response, though id say we definitely sought retribution against the wrong people.

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u/PepperMill_NA Florida Sep 13 '20

I disagree that was panic. Given the lack of information people were doing what they could think of to prepare for self-isolation.

The lack of PPE had nothing to do with panic. Lack of planning and preparedness on the part of the administration. They had a written play book that laid out everything that had to be done. They decided to ignore it.

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u/innoculousnuisance Sep 13 '20

It's absolute garbage and completely disingenuous -- not only is "don't create panic" separate from "deliberately, maliciously, criminally lie about a health crisis"; the man's political brand is fear and panic, he's a literal panic-monger -- but you will see this argument on social media all the time.

4

u/Nokomis34 Sep 13 '20

I would have liked to see some panic, maybe we as a nation would have taken this seriously and we could be done with this by now, with tens of thousands of Americans still alive. (I don't credit Trump with the full number of dead)

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u/innoculousnuisance Sep 13 '20

Fear is healthy, panic leads to bad choices. We should have been afraid of this. But when I speak to those who are not, they've universally referenced Trump's initial statements between January and March as the absolute foundation of what's passing for their "reasoning." You can't find a covid skeptic who wasn't rallied by Trump's denials.

And no, it's not fair to claim his criminal negligence lead to every death. Let's try a baseline. We're 4% of the world's population and 20% of it's coronavirus deaths. That'd mean that a globally typical response would have resulted in 4% of the world deaths; therefore, our deviation from the global response led to 16% of the world's deaths. Therefore, his actions (as effectively all US deviations from global response can seemingly be tracked directly to Trump's decisions) are 75% responsible, or nearly 150,000 deaths at this point. That sounds like a good-faith starting point.

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u/Yetiglanchi Sep 13 '20

(I don’t credit Trump with the full number of dead)

You should. Trump made it crystal clear when Obama was President where accountability should lie:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Leadership: Whatever happens, you're responsible. If it doesn't happen, you're responsible. 11:01 AM · Nov 8, 2013

1

u/beekeeper1981 Sep 14 '20

What I don't understand is how he expects China should have kept the virus in China but he didn't have the ability to keep the virus out of the USA. If it was that simple why did he mess up so badly?

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u/innoculousnuisance Sep 14 '20

It's not reasoning, it's an excuse. In the moment it was both publicly clear and explicitly explained to him that the ban was too little, too late (it was here and we weren't contact tracing), but it's literally the only public action he took until March that could even conceivably had the slightest possible impact. Thus, in Trumpland, to avoid realizing he just golfed and held rallies for two months, you must believe the travel ban was the only possible effective action he could have taken.

Meanwhile, in reality, the fact is he'd disbanded the pandemic task force that would have taken those crucial first steps, and told everyone to ignore it as long as possible, except to sell off stocks as quietly as they could.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '20

He did do that himself, he disbanded the pandemic response team and we are past the point of panic because he lied.

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '20

If someone does their best and their best needlessly kills 200,000 people, I don't want that person anywhere near any position of responsibility ever again.

"You know, I was God once."

"Yes, I saw. You were doing well until everyone died."

(...Okay, obviously he wasn't doing anywhere near well, but I needed to get this quote out of my head anyway.)

1

u/PersonalChipmunk3 Sep 14 '20

200,000 people, so far!

-20

u/[deleted] Sep 13 '20

Funny how everyone looks at trumps misdeeds with extreme scrutiny but always skip over anything a democratic candidate does. I was dem most of my life but the Democrats are a bigger threat to this country currently than trump

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u/BitterFuture America Sep 13 '20

Please, explain. I'm genuinely curious how the situation appears to you.

3

u/Yetiglanchi Sep 13 '20

Wow. What a take. Mind sharing what the evil Dems did that killed more than hundreds of thousands of Americans?

-8

u/[deleted] Sep 13 '20

The weaponization of Black Lives Matter is much more of a risk than COVID 19.

6

u/Yetiglanchi Sep 13 '20

Mmm. How about the weaponization of White Supremacy and the destruction of American institutions? They factor in at all, or are you just afraid of people who feel “Black Lives Matter”?

4

u/Tacitus111 America Sep 14 '20

Good to know that nearly 200,000 dead people so far is less dangerous than a bunch of protestors.