Birx Blabs

By Baxter

The retrospectives on Benedict Donald have begun. Never mind that a significant slice of the MAGA universe, not to mention Trump himself, are deluding themselves into thinking that the President inaugurated on January 20 will not be Joe Biden. (We just have one question for them: Who is chairing the Trump inaugural committee?)

That's okay. We understand the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross five stages of grief. The Trumpsters are deep into "denial," but are also wallowing in "anger," and perhaps the January 6 contretemps are their version of "bargaining." The world has yet to see them grapple with "depression" and "acceptance." We'll wait.

Meanwhile, yes, the mainstream media are moving foward with look-backs and assessments of the worst Presidency in the history of the universe. Over at The New York Times, Maggie Haberman, who inexplicably is willing to subject herself to Trumpworld beyond the Presidency by writing a book, has published a long piece with four other reporters about Benedict Donald's massive fuck-up on the coronavirus. We assume this was the Times's answer to The Atlantic magazine's piece about where America went wrong. But as Haberman, et. al., reported:

• Trump thought all the scientists advising him on the pandemic were Democrats.
• After Scott Atlas, a radiologist with no infectious disease experience, joined the task force in August, he was the only doctor Trump would listen to. Dr. Deborah Birx head-butted him over the question of reopening schools.
  
• Even though his own pollsters said the MAGA crowd would accept masks, Trump refused to promote them. "I'm not doing a mask mandate," he said.
  
• Trump blamed Jared for everything.
• Task force "head" Mike Pence faded into the wallpaper because he was afraid of crossing Trump.

It is all too disgusting. But if you read between the lines, it's pretty clear that a main source for the story was Deborah Birx.

We cats are not fans of Dr. Birx. Her enabling of Benedict Donald during the worst early days of the pandemic disgusted us. We got sick of her refusal to push back on his egregious suggestions, and we got sick of her scarves. When we Googled her, we were surprised to find her resume thinner than we expected. So we're perfectly happy to have Team Biden send her off riding into the sunset. (And yes, we also have reservations about Anthony Fauci — but his long career, from AIDS to now, lends him more credibility. And if Larry Kramer and he could become BFFs, who are we to argue with Larry?)

Nevertheless, if Birx is talking to the press about Trump's biggest, hugest, most astoundingly-large-ever failure, we're good with that. She's clearly at the "anger" phase of the stages of grief, and we all have a lot to learn. We cats PURR.

(PHOTO: Erin Schaff, The New York Times)