FINISH HIM!

| 10:30 am EDT March 19, 2020
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

When Donald Trump called for nonpartisan political unity in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, take a wild guess how long it took him to violate his own decree. But let’s be honest here, even in the dim recesses of what we laughingly refer to as Trump’s brain, he knows perfectly well that he screwed up early and often. “Political unity” is code for “Please, pretty please, stop pointing that out.”

Meanwhile Trump continues to blame everyone but himself for the unsustainable mess we are in. What began as a “Democratic hoax” which, after “Russia, Russia, Russia” and the “perfect phone call” is yet another attempt to “impeach Donald Trump again,” has transmogrified into the Obama administration’s failure to act as quickly and decisively as Trump has.

No one is sure what Trump means by that because Trump won’t cite any specific instances of Obama’s alleged failure, and Trump dismantled Obama’s pandemic response team in 2018 so we have no means of measuring just how badly that team would have failed. But since the team was composed of some of the best, most respected people in the world, people who were uniquely qualified to tackle the current pandemic, it’s hard to see where they could have gone wrong. Top of the list was Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer, who led a global anti-malaria initiative during the George W. Bush administration that oversaw a miraculous 40% decrease in malaria cases worldwide. I don’t know about you but in my book that qualifies Admiral Zeimer as a genuine hero.

Even so, under the circumstances some of you might see some merit in our dialing down the political rhetoric. After all, we are in this together, are we not? COVID-19 is no respecter of persons or parties. Even if Trump doesn’t take the lead on unity, you might not unreasonably argue, perhaps we should. Maybe we should set the example and be the bigger people.

Nonsense. We can multitask. We can fight the coronavirus pandemic and simultaneously point out how badly Trump screwed up and how badly he continues to screw up. In fact it’s our duty to do exactly that. Trump had his chance to be presidential and unifying and he blew it right on schedule. Trump could have been an adult for once and taken responsibility for the mess we are in, but instead he went low, dirty and small, just like the low, dirty and small man he is. His latest game, to call it the “Chinese virus,” or, if you can believe it, “kung flu,” is inexcusable xenophobic race-baiting, but consistent with the little man non-leader we have all come to expect from this loathsome cretin.

Like I say, we can multitask. Our lives and the future of our species depend on our acting quickly and effectively in ridding ourselves of the coronavirus and the Trump virus. Both are deadly diseases that must be eradicated. Let’s do it together in November and make Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. President of the United States of America.