Last week tonight with john oliver trump and harris 8/25

Donald Trump the first president elected without any prior experience as a human being now this this morning Trump actually had some major news for us that Abu bakar Al bagdadi the head of Isis had been killed and in classic Trump fashion he was able to take something fundamentally positive and express it in the weirdest imaginable way because here is how he described the operation they did a lot of shooting and they did a lot of blasting even not going through the front door you know you think you go through the door if you're a normal person you say knock knock may I come in uh the fact is that they blasted their way into uh the house they had a beautiful big hole and they ran in and they got everybody by surprise what are you doing did Trump only just learn how soldiers work listen these guys are amazing they got these chameleon suits and big shooties and blasy they don't say knock knock no they don't do that like a normal person they go through big beautiful holes and they shout surprise a lot of people are learning about this for the first time this is new to a lot of people but wait because you haven't yet heard Trump pay tribute to one crucial member of the team or canine as they call I call it a dog a beautiful dog a talented dog that's right I call them dogs not like other people who call them furry lizards or barking cats or elephants but smaller and different to me they are and forever will be dogs that's my ter for them that I made up and and look while baghdaddy being gone is clearly great news I'd actually like to focus tonight on a different decision Trump recently made in the same region and one that I would argue could have more long-term ramifications and which tells us much more about his decision- making as commander-in-chief it's a move that alarmed many even his cheerleaders on Fox and Friends the United States is going to start pulling troops from turkey's Border in Syria that announcement last night running uh the White House says it's clearing the way for Turkish troops to invade a disastrous series of events I hope the president will rethink this wow you know things are bad for Trump when he's even lost the support of fox and friends a show whose actual slogan is President Trump's dick is 17 in long and thick as a tree trunp that's the real slogan now very basically what happened here was Trump suddenly and against the Council of nearly all his advisers pulled back troops along the Syria turkey border here who had been working with Kurdish L forces to contain Isis and it wasn't just that our presence there also helped protect Kurdish civilians from Turkey Isis and the Syrian government and our troop withdrawal has had immediate consequences Turkish forces moved in almost as soon as we left and over a 100 civilians have been killed with nearly 200,000 displaced it has been a catastrophe and this move has been nearly universally condemned it's been criticized by everyone from Bernie sers and Elizabeth Warren to Mitch McConnell and lindsy Graham the last of whom did not mince his words to abandon these people is a real [ __ ] show and I'm hoping president Trump will reconsider he's about to make the biggest mistake of his presidency I hope he adjust a [ __ ] show although to be fair lindsy Graham always looks like he's just said that exact phrase you know I come into this Bojangles every Sunday every Sunday and I have never seen service like this my chicken is Dam my biscuit is cold my day is ruined people this is a real [ __ ] show right here I will take my order to go to go I am lusted and when when the consequences of a decision are that D and the condemnation that widespread it feels like it might be worth asking what exactly happened why did Trump decide to do it and what might the ramifications be going forward and let's start with what happened now obviously the situation in Syria is incred ibly complex you can be forgiven for not fully understanding it what is much less forgivable is pretending to understand it when you clearly don't it's a very uh semi complicated not too complicated if you're smart but it's a semi complicated problem oh good it's only semi complicated is it I'd forgotten that Trump spent the 90s as the senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the foreign policy Research Institute and not as I clearly wrongly remembered losing all his dad's money and trying unsuccessfully to bang Madonna I forgot that cuz clearly I'm not smart like him look there are more factions involved here than we have time to cover but the important group to know about are the Kurds there are about 30 million of them in the region spread mostly across Syria turkey Iraq and Iran they are the largest ethnic group in the world without a country of their own so there are they're a minority wherever they live putting them in a precarious situation but it's important to know that they have been close Military Allies with America in the past which is why it was so odd to hear Trump justify abandoning them like this somebody wrote in a very very powerful article today they didn't help us in the second world war they didn't help us with nor Normandy as an example they mentioned names of different battles they weren't there but they're there to help us with their land and that's a different thing hold on let me let me let me just get this straight you are mad because the Kurds didn't help the US fight in Normandy quick question the [ __ ] does that have to do with anything think there were also no Kurds at the Battle of Gettysburg or helping us get to the moon all suspiciously cdus missions where were the Kurds Neil could have used their help holding his ladder oh they were all busy were they all of them the the the fact is the Kurds have fought multiple times to help America including in both the Gulf and Iraq Wars meaning by the way the Kurds fought with the US military in at least two more Wars than Donald Trump ever [ __ ] did more recently we turned to the curs in 2015 to help us contain Isis in Syria we provided training and air support and they were the Frontline troops doing the close fighting and it was a very tight partnership the US military trusted their allies so completely that the Kurds were soon calling in American air strikes it's true the Kurds would point at something and we would blow it up that's an incredible level of trust if I had that power to put it mildly there would be no more Applebees they know what they did they know what they did now the the Kurds sacrifice in that fight was significant while at least six Americans died fighting in that region the Kurds suffered 11,000 casualties and that Alliance is one of the reasons why Isis which controlled this much territory in Syria in 2015 has since lost all of it in fact a key reason that we were able to take out Al baghdaddy was thanks to intelligence from the Kurds so they fought bravely with us and the situation in northeastern Syria was relatively stable and then in an instant Trump threw that all away so why why did he do that well to hear him tell it it's actually pretty simple I don't want to be in Syria forever it's sand and it's death okay first since when does Trump avoid areas of sand and death he owns a golf club in Florida where the average age is opposed the Civil Rights Act the guy loves sand and death but that is part of his reductive argument that America should not be stuck in Endless Wars and that the troops should come home which is at least a real coherent foreign policy position the problem is the troops aren't actually coming home since May we've actually increased the number of them deployed to the Middle East by 14,000 and just days after his Syria decision Trump made a big announcement we are sending troops and other things to the Middle East to help Saudi Arabia but are you ready Saudi Arabia at my request has agreed to pay us for everything we're doing that's the first okay so one this probably won't surprise you they have not agreed to that and and two even if they had that would be a weird thing to brag about the US military doesn't charge for protection because it isn't a mercenary Force it's the reason the eagle on the seal carries arrows and an olive branch not arrows and a credit card reader but but the idea that we'll send troops to a country that pays us is definitely in keeping with Trump's short-term purely transactional worldview it's the same philosophy that's led him to suggest withdrawing troops from South Korea because he thinks they're not paying us enough or to threaten to pull out of NATO because he thinks other countries aren't contributing their fair share so look I'm sorry Kurds unless you can give Donald Trump something he wants like I don't know Hunter Biden's email password or Milan Trump's phone number you can apparently expect [ __ ] all from him so so if this wasn't done out of some Grand principle why did it happen and happen so suddenly well it seems Trump's decision followed a phone call with president erdogan of Turkey and a little context here for years turkey has struggled with a Kurdish militant group called The pkk Who are unquestionably extreme the state department considers them a terrorist group and erdogan firmly believes that a Kurdish group we've been working with are basically the same as the pkk and he wants them either dead or nowhere near the Turkish border but this isn't actually a new problem we've been basically managing to balance our interest in containing Isis with our needs to manage erdogan's concerns for years now it has been difficult but we've basically done it until it seems erdogan got on the phone with Trump earlier this month and told him he wanted to move against Kurdish forces in Syria and Trump essentially said fine we'll run away then and that is a decision that has baffled many including Mitt Romney erdogan basically said we're coming in get out of the way and America uh blinked is am I reading that wrong no M you're actually not much like the rest of America discovering this week that your secret Twitter account was named Pierre dcto that's real you are very much not reading that wrong incidentally Pierre dcto sounds like a name that would have come up in Pulp Fiction if that conversation about French McDonald's Had kept going in France they called the quarter pounder A Royale with cheese and they call Grimace Pierre decto but it is truly troubling the sheer extent to which Trump has just rolled over for erdogan he called the Kurds who remember have repeatedly fought and died alongside the US military No Angels and while at one point Trump did apparently try to prevent a Kurdish Slaughter erdogan seemed to feel pretty comfortable ignoring him yesterday a letter surfaced from president Trump to Eran he warned against a Turkish military offensive and said in decidedly undiplomatic language don't be a tough guy don't be a fool erdogan reportedly threw away the letter and launched the assault into Syria the same day holy [ __ ] he didn't just ignore him erdan threw away a piece of mail that day that alone is ice cold he probably also throws away birthday cards directly after reading them like a monster instead of keeping them on the kitchen counter for a week out of a sense of irrational guilt and then throwing them out because what else are you going to do frame it of course not it's a piece of trash but not for a week but but even even if you think Trump was right to withdraw troops from the area it clearly makes sense to do it in a way that will cause the least damage to the region your allies and your own interests but Trump did none of that our withdrawal was so rushed we had to leave a lot behind just watch this Russian reporter wandering around a US base just hours after the troops had left they left here yesterday at 4:00 a.m. look here I am currently at the US kitchen American soldiers used to eat here the fridge is [Music] full [Music] Coca-Cola wow so not only did we dump our allies without warning we left a refrigerator full of free Coke for whoever took our place although maybe the most interesting part of that video was watching the reporter blatantly ignore the fridge full of pepsy right next to it because even to Russian reporters the answer to Is Pepsi okay is a resounding so so basically America left the region the same way you leave a party right after you clogged the toilet quickly leaving everything behind and forcing someone else to deal with all the [ __ ] and the consequ quences to this have been dire for starters kurdish-led forces were in charge of guarding many Isis prisoners and by leaving so abruptly we forced them to abandon their posts to fight for their lives and the thing that any six-year-old could tell you would happen next happened next the White House has tried to downplay how many of the 10,000 Isis prisoners in Syria may have escaped there were a few that got out a small number relatively speaking and they've been largely recaptured but that's not what the president's special Envoy for Syria James Jeffrey said on Wednesday we would say that the number is now over a 100 uh we do not know where they are it's true over a 100 Isis prisoners escaped and we don't know where they are or at least they don't know where they are because I have a surprise for everyone here tonight ladies and gentlemen the Isis prisoners oh [ __ ] oh [ __ ] oh [ __ ] where are they oh [ __ ] oh [ __ ] oh [ __ ] [ __ ] oh [ __ ] they were they were supposed to be oh [ __ ] why did we give them shovels does doesn't make any sense anyway as I was saying over a 100 Isis prisoners have escaped and we have no idea where they are and the thing is it gets even worse here because when you give a green lights to an authoritarian terrible things can happen and terrible things very much did we saw for the first time alleged atrocities carried out by turkish-backed Arab militias this video today appears to show Arab militias executing a curd by the roadside as they shout Allah abbar and proudly saying film me film me that is horrifying a potential War crime and completely completely avoidable yet astonishingly even in the face of scenes like that and over a 100 c cilian deaths remember Trump has actually tried to spin the Carnage as evidence of his tactical genius it was unconventional what I did I said they're going to have to fight a little while sometimes you have to let them fight a little while then people find out how tough the fighting is sometimes you have to let them fight it's like two kids in a lot you got to let them fight and then you pull them apart the [ __ ] are you talking about that is not true for Syria and it's also not true for kids you weird monster Trump just reveals what we've essentially always known he's not just a shitty president and a shitty person he's a shitty Dad thank God he never had to raise any children now now thankfully thankfully the worst of the violence appears to have abated at least for the moment but that is largely because after the US left a power vacuum in the region another major player stepped in Russia's Vladimir Putin tonight became the new king in Syria as he and turkey's president erdogan carved up the country between them exactly Putin now has a larger foothold in the region and the Kurdish fighters who were once allied with us for so long have now flipped sides and struck a deal with Syria's Bashar al-assad to avoid being wiped out so Trump has made a snaap decision where the big winners are Putin erdogan Assad and Isis and that is a group that you do not want to be friendly with although I actually believe they were all at a Cowboys game with Ellen this weekend look look look we're all different and that's okay but but Trump but Trump may not be bothered particularly that he's empowered so many authoritarian leaders because we know he has a softbot for them in fact even after erdogan disregarded Trump's warnings and launched a bloody campaign once he'd agreed to a temporary ceasefire Trump went straight back to effusively praising him I just want to thank and congratulate though president erdan on he's a friend of mine and I'm glad we didn't have a problem because frankly he's a hell of a leader and he's a tough man he's a strong man and he did the right thing yeah he's a strong man he's a strong man that's not a [ __ ] compliment that's a synonym for dictator and and that image might actually sum up the insanity of this whole situation the president thinking he's projecting strength obsequiously foring over an authoritarian for ding to pause a Slaughter that the president himself had enabled and look I know that it is it is so easy to criticize anyone's policy in this region it is very complicated any move is going to have Ripple effects intended or otherwise Syria was one of the biggest problem spots in Obama's foreign policy so I'm not saying that it is easy or even possible to get a situation this difficult completely right but it's genuinely hard to get it this wrong we we took a fundamentally stable situation betrayed a strategically vital Ally and immensely damaged our reputation just watch how the Kurds treated a US Convoy leaving the country Kurdish civilians until now close us allies throwing potatoes and yelling insults at American troops ordered out of Syria these images Tonight Show one of the lowest moments of America's reputation in the Middle East in years think about what he just said there one of the lowest moments of America's reputation in the Middle East and remember a guy in the Middle East once took off his shoe threw it at the president and then while the people around him watched took off his other shoe and also threw that at the president look the more you look at all of this the more worrying it gets because this was an unforced error Trump chose to do something this sudden this impetuous and this damaging and he's just not going to change so imagine what he might do in a crisis not of his own making that is one of the many terrifying things about the prospect of a second term or indeed the remaining year of this first one because there is nothing more dangerous than someone with a massive amount of power a dictator fetish and an inability to think in anything but transactional terms and who is stupid enough to think that this is all not too complicated if you are smart our first story concerns the Corona virus it's the Home Alone 2 of viruses as it's Amplified the dangers of air travel lots of it took place in New York and right in the middle for no good reason is Donald [ __ ] Trump and I know that the fact we're about to talk about this at all would make Trump roll his eyes that's all I hear about now that's all I hear turn on television right co co co co co co a plane goes down 500 people dead they don't talk about it co co co co by the way on November 4th you won't hear about it anymore true co co look believe me I would love nothing more than to not talk about covid and instead return to subjects we' normally cover on this show like scented candle fraud or alpaca Vetinarian malpractice but unfortunately I can't do that when so many Americans are still dying of covid Co every day for many Trump's handling of the Corona virus is going to be a significant factor in how they vote and to listen to him that's really not a problem he's labeled his handling of the pandemic as tremendous A+ and said nothing more could have been done which is obviously ridiculous as America has just 4% of the global population and yet about 20% % of global cases and if you're thinking oh come on who doesn't know that Trump [ __ ] up this pandemic the truth is a lot of Voters are more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt how do you feel president Trump has done in handling the pandemic at the best he can for something that's so somewhat unknown I think he's probably doing the best that he can right now I mean there's so much mixed information out there and trying to decipher what's fact and what's fiction the pandemic not his fault and everything that's gone along with it not his fault he's doing the best he can is he I mean I guess that depends doesn't it do you mean that he's doing the best that any president can or the best that he can because if it's the second one you may actually be right we should probably all be grateful that he hasn't tried bottling his urine and selling it as Trump immunity juice and look all presidents whoever they are tend to face a defining crisis and this was unquestionably trumps but his response has been such a disaster that there are massive fuckups you may have already forgotten remember that time that he suggested we should leave American citizens on a cruise ship ravaged with Corona virus because they'd increased the number of positive cases in the country and he likes the numbers being where they are that was insane right and we covered that on this show in fact we've talked about Corona virus a lot on the show this year but we still thought that tonight especially if you or someone you know also thinks that nothing more could have been done it would be worth taking a look at three crucial areas where more could very much have been done specifically preparation coordination and communication and let's start with preparation because it is worth noting previous Presidents had been aware of a threat like this for years George W bush demanded the government develop a pandemic response plan all the way back in 2005 and Obama created a pandemic preparedness team and gave a speech in December of 2014 that is eerily preent there may and likely will will come a time in which we have both an airborne disease that is deadly and in order for us to deal with that effectively we have to put in place an infrastructure not just here at home but globally that allows us to see it quickly isolate it quickly respond to it quickly so that if and when a new strain of flu like the Spanish Flu crops up up 5 years from now or a decade from now we've made the investment wow those are some shockingly specific predictions what else did he say there in exactly 5 years the Warriors are going to blow a 3-1 lead to the Cavs and LeBron's going to have a chased down block that makes you Soul jump out of your body also Kamal njani is going to get really jacked in a way you don't know quite how to feel about so previous presidents were well aware that something like this could happen and yet in the years before this outbreak Trump's Administration not only disbanded Obama's pandemic team they also cut CDC staff operating within China by more than 2third and ended a pandemic early warning program and even once the pandemic had begun Trump took an appallingly long time to take it seriously he will often complain and not wrongly that China took too long to be forthright with us about the virus but what he doesn't mention is that once we found out about it we acted unforgivably slowly the first public reports of what was happening in Wuhan came on December 31st first and yet Alex AAR Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services couldn't get a meeting with Trump to talk about it until January 18th and even when he did Trump apparently interrupted him to ask when flavored vaping products would be back on the market which you know cool then Trump continually implied that the virus would simply go away despite learning on February 26th that there was Community spread in the US something we might have known sooner had we also not lost a month due to flaws in testing process that we were extremely slow to fix and yet despite all of this Trump loves to claim that it doesn't matter what he didn't do what really matters is this this country is very lucky and I'm very lucky that I put the ban on China I swiftly implemented a travel ban on China I put in the ban on China I did the China ban we put that ban on when I put a ban on you have to remember I put the ban on China B travel from China we put the ban on China put a b CH China yeah to listen to Trump tell it he bans travel from China and job done so if you've lost a loved one to this virus I've got some great news you didn't they're completely fine they've just been busy jet setting all across the world enjoying live performances with thousands of their closest friends because Trump put the ban on China and we're all very lucky he did but a few things about that because while he did indeed impose some travel restrictions on China they took effect on February 2nd that is 2 weeks after the first known case in the US and also after 45 other countries had already done so and this ban had some major exceptions including allowing US citizens residents and their immediate family members to still come into the country from China meaning an additional 40,000 people came in from there during the first two months that his ban was in place also we now know that the virus came to the New York City area not from China but predominantly via Europe and yet it took Trump an additional 6 weeks to place any restrictions on travelers from there and when he finally did that it came in a chaotic Oval Office Speech where he falsely made it sound like some Americans wouldn't be allowed back into the country which had predictable consequences confusion leading to chaos at US airports under the administration's European travel ban line stretching for hours in New York Dallas and Chicago's oare yeah those images don't get any easier to look at people panicked by Trump's announcement rushed into airports that were not adequately prepared to safely process them with some passengers reporting there was no hand sanitizer available and having to share pens to fill out immigration forms and this was before most of us knew we shouldn't be sharing anything with anyone which incidentally is still true despite what this coke bottle tells you do not share that coke with grandma get her her own and have it delivered by someone in a hazmat suit happy 90th gamy try to stay safe so Trump's travel ban wasn't a ban wasn't early and didn't do what he said it did but even if he had rolled it out perfectly experts will tell you if you decide to use travel restrictions they have to be part of a comprehensive plan because the best they can do is delay a pandemic not prevent it all they'll do is buy you a little bit of time which is useless if you don't then use it wisely which actually brings us to our second Point coordination and I shouldn't have to remind you just how badly this Administration coordinated crucial supplies like PPE some medical professionals resulted to making their own using SK goggles snorkel masks and garbage bags and yet the White House denies mishandling anything the RNC even featured this video touting the heroism of front-line workers including a clip of trump talking to a nurse practitioner in the Oval Office but if you find the raw footage of that clip you will see that the conversation they're having is pretty revealing the PPE has been sporadic uh but it's been manageable and we do what we have to do sporadic for you but not sporadic for a lot of other people oh no I agree Mr President because I've heard the opposite I've heard that they are loaded up with with gowns now and you know initially we had nothing we had empty cupboards we had empty shelves we had nothing because it wasn't put there by the last Administration okay first sporadic for you not sporadic for other people is the literal definition of sporadic and second his complaint that he had empty cupboard and shelves is slightly undercut by the fact he'd been president for 3 years when that conversation took place if you move into a new apartment and 3 years later there is still nothing in the cupboards you don't get to blame the previous tenant when you're hungry go buy some [ __ ] food and it's not like the administration wasn't warned here take Mike Bowen a top executive at a PPE production company for years he has been sounding the alarm that most of the US mask Supply now comes from abroad and in January seeing what was coming our way he emailed everyone he could think of in the government offering a clear plan to ramp up production I voted for Donald Trump I thought you know if I contact enough people in the administration somebody one of these people are going to look at this and go hey this is the problem maybe we ought to call this guy and uh no I couldn't get any I didn't get any response there now in hindsight would warning Donald Trump have done anything you'd get into the Oval Office and Go sir a quarter million Americans are going to die and he'd say like me die or just like random people and you go well Herman Kane and he'd say yeah not really seeing the problem here and you'd say it might cost you the election and he'd say but I'd still have my fans and rallies right and you'd say yeah of course they'll never abandon you even if you're actively killing them and he' go okay not really see what the warning is about here please leave it's time for me to watch my shows boen could not have been more explicit about what needed to happen he told government contacts that placing large non-cancellable orders would allow him to ramp up production immediately which was important because and I quote I think we're in deep [ __ ] but the administration doled and boen later testified before Congress about what that delay meant I'm getting 500 to 1,000 emails a day I'm getting emails from people not businesses I I'm getting emails from moms I'm getting emails from old people please can send me MK and I you make a product that can protect people I can't help these I can't help all these people yeah that must have been incredibly frustrating because he offered the administration a clear way to at least mitigate the damage and they just didn't move fast enough and decisions like that meant that suddenly and entirely avoidably we had to scramble for essential equipment at the same time as almost everyone else on Earth and for all Trump's supposed expertise as a businessman his administration's approach to managing the supply chain was a total shambles at first Trump encouraged states to get it themselves pitting them against each other and essentially starting a bidding war and later Jared [ __ ] Kushner was made the White House lead for something called the supply chain Task Force at one point it tried to coordinate things directly with Jared pulling in a group of mostly young untrained volunteers to help vet leads on PPE and here is one of them describing what happened after an initial pep talk about the importance of them tracking down equipment everyone stood up and started filing into different offices and I remember the only people left were the volunteers we thought we'd be auxiliary support for an existing procurement team that just needed to be expanded as as quickly as possible and we would you know do data entry for contracts um and instead we were the team I think when people imagined the federal government response in the war room they thought it would be this big you know energized group of experts not 10 20-year-old volunteers that really doesn't sound good and I'm not saying that young people are all dumb idiots Mozart composed a Minette at age six this guy created the downfall of society at age 19 You' just hope that every one on the federal task force would have resource management experience that goes a little Beyond I played Settlers of Katan at my friend toa's house one night and I actually did pretty well and the thing is one of the best ways not to run short on PPE is to not have Mass Community spread and one of the best ways to achieve that is by promoting strong Public Health guidelines which brings us to our final Point here communication because Trump has repeatedly undermined public messaging from the very start despite the fact that as we now know he knew extremely early on just how bad things could get you just breathe the air and that's how it's uh passed and so that's a very tricky one that's a very delicate one uh it's also more deadly than your you know your even your strenuous flu that's what he said privately but in public later that month he was still downplaying the severity and spread of the virus this is a flu this is like a flu yeah Trump just lied which I know at this point isn't something that I should have to say it seems like the kind of thing we all already know like puppies are good and jepetto definitely built Pinocchio for weird sex stuff that really should not be a surprise cuz be honest if you live next door to a bachelor who was aged somewhere between 17 and a th000 whose only friend was a fish whose house was full of not for sale handmade clocks going off at different times and who one day said good news this little wooden boy is Pinocchio he is my son you'd have exactly two thoughts one he's [ __ ] that puppet and two we have to move the guy whose house sounds like a bomb built himself a sun we have to move no judgment [ __ ] that puppet it's not a crime there's no law written down anywhere that says japeto is not allowed to [ __ ] a puppet he made while his fish watches I'm not calling the cops here I'm just saying I'm moving away from jepetto and yet even as it became clear to everyone that this was very much more than the flu Trump constantly undermined his own administration's advice on April 3rd the CDC finally advised that the public wear masks but Trump immediately undercut it in the very press conference that news was announced the CDC is advising the use of non-med cloth phase covering as an additional voluntary Public Health measure so it's voluntary you don't have to do it they suggested for a period of time but uh this is voluntary I don't think I'm going to be doing it and just like that wearing a mask was a political issue Trump himself didn't wear a mask in public until July which is obviously dangerous you can't effectively convince people to do something while refusing to do it yourself it is why Soul cycle instructors are on a bike like everyone else instead of just yelling pedal faster while lounging on a bean bag and eating a bucket of hot wings it's about setting a good example and the thing is Americans were listening to him listen to these people just a few weeks later just like the flu right well that's just like the flu far more contagious well I know but people die from the flu also they do die from the so to me that's that's just the way I look at it I mean if he's not wearing a mask I'm not going to wear a mask if he's not worried I'm not worried the president yes sir okay I understand that impulse I really do but if he's not worried I'm not worried is a weird thing to say when he is the president surrounded by 24/7 security and a team of doctors and you and not even surrounded by a shirt it has been genuinely remarkable just how consistently Trump has undercut Public Health messaging over a decade ago the CDC actually developed guidelines for how leaders should communicate during a crisis and they are be first be right be credible Express empathy promote action and show respect and I'm not saying that the CDC has been perfect during this pandemic but Trump did the precise opposite of every single one of those and on the empathy one which should be the hardest to do badly he has been borderline sociopathic because just think about what medical professionals have had to go through this year especially at the start of this crisis in New York hospitals had giant refrigerated trucks that served as makeshift morgs and there were Mass Graves dug on Hart Island even as Hospital workers broke down in video testimonials it was utterly brutal here and with that in mind let's go back to that Oval Office meeting Trump had with nurses you know the one that they used in the RNC video and just watch Trump respond to someone citing concerns about what his colleagues were going through and uh if I may uh add one big concern that I have is the uh post-traumatic trauma that uh a lot of the nurses and doctors and other members of the healthcare team will be facing in the future you know they're seeing death um probably three to four times the average than than what they normally would yes yes sir there's no question about it and by the way while we're at it you pass his F around okay around there you go I got some the other side I want mix it up I know after four years it is hard for anything Trump does to shock you anymore but it is worth making sure that that still does because that man was in the middle of talking about his P PTSD and the president cut him off so he could offer everyone pens pens he wasn't even listening he was just sitting there waiting for his turn to speak so he could do his pen thing is there anything more Grim than that I mean I guess you could have not offered them pens but would that have been worse better it's honestly difficult to say it's even more difficult to write a joke off off oh Trump must be great for you comedians right yeah not really this has been a [ __ ] nightmare and all of this the lack of preparation coordination and communication has had real world effects and I know that Trump badly wants everyone to believe that nothing more could have been done but that's just not true other countries have done more and suffered less we have four times more people than Germany but 17 times the covid cases and we have three and a half times more people than Vietnam but 7,500 times the covid cases this wasn't inevitable and look I shouldn't have to take 20 minutes to tell you that Trump mismanaged the pandemic in a lot of ways the answer to the question has Trump done a good job handling this pandemic is well he got the disease so you know and the thing is there are so many more terrible moments we haven't even had time to cover from using this racist term multiple times to never once releasing a comprehensive Federal strategy for in covid to removing a watchdog overseeing $2 trillion in covid relief to saying he asked his people to slow down testing which his people then tried to pass off as him kidding to which he responded I don't kid to basally claiming that doctors are inflating coronavirus death counts for money to suggesting sunlight and ingesting disinfectants could help cure the virus to repeatedly undermining the nation's top infectious disease experts at one point he retweeted fire fouchy and got so openly jealous of him that when Fouch was invited to throw the opening pitch at a Nationals game Trump announced he'd be doing the same for the Yankees surprising them since they've not actually invited him and look if Biden is elected it's not like he's going to magically end this pandemic but he'll at least take it seriously and it's pretty bleak that that alone sounds good but it really does cuz at this point Trump is clearly bored of hearing about covid and I am sorry about that but you know what's been completely exhausting for the rest of us worrying about it all the time for what it's worth multiple members of our staff were sick earlier this year and it was heart-wrenching been constantly concerned about their health and that concern hasn't gone away there are long-term and devastating effects for many who have recovered that we still don't fully understand people are sick and dying can't see their families and cases now spiking to record highs all over the country this virus has taken so much from us our Peace of Mind our routines and nearly a quarter of a million Americans and it's frankly pathetic that in response the only things Trump has offered people in this country over the past eight months are damaging lies staggering incompetence andas Al when he's feeling generous some shitty [ __ ] pens