Kushner and Trump Guilty of Politically Motivated Mass Murder?

[_moksha]

I swear there will be a day where calling someone a Trump will be synonymous with calling them stupid.

Maybe further down the definitional list. I think the top usage will be for someone displaying traits of pathological lying and narcissism.

Perhaps the term Trumpanistas would be a good label for all the crooks and weasels who worked in the Trump administration and the venal politicians who tied their star to Trump.

[_honorentheos]

How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan “Went Poof Into Thin Air”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07 ... auo8ILEqkI

That's the same link I shared earlier, and it's interesting. What struck me as most relevant was the wrap:

The gamble that son-in-law real estate developers, or Morgan Stanley bankers liaising with billionaires, could effectively stand in for a well-coordinated federal response has proven to be dead wrong. Even the smallest of Jared Kushner’s solutions to the pandemic have entangled government agencies in confusion and raised concerns about illegality.

In the three months after the mysterious test kits arrived at the UAE embassy, diplomats there had been prodding the U.S. government to make good on the $52 million shipment. Finally, on June 26, lawyers for the Department of Health and Human Services sent a cable to the embassy, directed to the company which had misspelled its own name on the original invoice: Cogna Technology Solutions LLC.

The cable stated, “HHS is unable to remit payment for the test kits in question, as the Department has not identified any warranted United States contracting officer” or any contract documents involved in the procurement. The cable cited relevant federal contract laws that would make it “unlawful for the Government to pay for the test kits in question.”

But perhaps most relevant for Americans counting on the federal government to mount an effective response to the pandemic and safeguard their health, the test kits didn’t work. As the Health and Human Services cable to the UAE embassy noted: “When the kits were delivered they were tested in accordance with standard procedures and were found to be contaminated and unusable.”

An FDA spokesperson told Vanity Fair the tests may have been rendered ineffective because of how they were stored when they were shipped from the Middle East. “The reagents should be kept cold,” the spokesperson said.

Although officials with FEMA and Health and Human Services would not acknowledge that the tests even exist, stating only that there was no official government contract for them, the UAE’s records are clear enough. As a spokesperson for the UAE embassy confirmed, “the US Government made an urgent request for additional COVID-19 test kits from the UAE government. One million test kits were delivered to the US government by April 1. An additional 2.5 million test kits were delivered to the US government by April 20.”


I'm sure there were statements made about Blue States and politics. But when I read the article it left the impression that the supposed "plan" was an outline that didn't get past the stage of setting objectives and tasks while the actions described show massive incompetence at work behind it.

I guess I've never agreed with Trump when he claims to have the best plans, be the best deal maker, or whatever superlative+action he's claiming at any given moment. Maybe he had a great plan but scrapped it. But it seems more likely they couldn't do things right, had chased the people away necessary to maneuver in the system in a crisis, are too proud to take the Rockefeller plan and move it forward. Don't know. Guess that's just me.

[_Some Schmo]

I swear there will be a day where calling someone a Trump will be synonymous with calling them stupid.

Maybe further down the definitional list. I think the top usage will be for someone displaying traits of pathological lying and narcissism.

Yeah, I think you're probably right about that. We might see Trump turn into a word like fu-ck where it's used in different contexts as different parts of speech, and never complementary.

- noun: What a fu-cking Trump you turned out to be.
- verb: You trumped up big this time, and you will pay.
- adjective: Pretty constipated there, but I finally squeezed out a Trump tower.
- adverb: He Trump lied his way to the bottom.
- pronoun: That's the Trump who let his dog sh-it on my yard.
- preposition: He hid his dope Trump ass.
- interjection: Trump! What an asshole.
- conjunction: Ivanka Trump Donald Trump Eric Trump assholes, oh my!