>> We've had reasons to believe that Donald Trump for some time, his slow response in
terms of making sure that people who believe they might have been exposed to coronavirus
could get tested for it.
It's his fear that the number of infections going up will make him look bad and that could
potentially hurt him.
We are in a reelection bid for him after all.
Well, that hypothesis has turned out to apparently been true.
In an interview with NPR, Dan Diamond, a reporter for Politico gave an account of Alex Azar
and Donald Trump and their conversations recently about this.
So he said, in the case of Alex Azar, he did go to the president in January.
He did push past resistance from the president's political aides to warn the president the
new coronavirus could be a major problem.
There were aides around Trump.
Kellyanne Conway had some skepticism at times that this was something that needed to be
a presidential priority.
That should have some follow-up questions for her the next time she's on CNN.
But it goes on to say, but at the same time, Secretary Azar has not always given the president
the worst case scenario of what could happen.
My understanding is Trump did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent
weeks.
And that's partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of
coronavirus outbreak.
And the president has made clear the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for
the president, the better for his potential reelection this fall.
>> Wow, just when- >> Yikes.
>> Just when you thought he couldn't get any more callus.
So this is what we were referring to earlier in the show.
Trump thinking, well, if they don't know they have the disease, then they won't blame me.
And the markets won't go down, and I'll get reelected.
So if that story is true and he did not order the test, which is the number one problem
we have right now in dealing with the virus.
We cannot get the test.
There's almost none available here.
And it's because he didn't want you to find out if you have the disease, so he could look
better.
There's literally almost nothing that a president could do that's worse than that.
Breaking into the political offices of the other party, what Nixon got driven out of
office for, seems mild by comparison.
So look, I know we went through an impeachment.
I know, everybody knows he's a monster and has accepted that he's a monster.
I know the Republican party will back him no matter what happens, no matter if they
know this is true or not.
And in fact, the Democrats have a Relief Bill for the coronavirus right now.
And the Republicans have held it up cuz they don't want to anger Donald Trump, that they
agree with it.
They would pass it today, but they're afraid that Donald Trump will say something mean
about them if they work with the Democrats on a Relief Bill.
So this is what the countries come to, with this kind of monster in charge that doesn't
care about your health, your well-being or even your life.
The only thing he cares about is me, me, me, me and his stupid reelection.
>> Yeah, I think in addition to Donald Trump not inspiring confidence as a leader or somebody
who has a soul.
Take a look at the other people who are in charge of this response.
Mike Pence, who oversaw an AIDS outbreak when he was governor of Indiana.
We have Alex Azar, a bonafide zealot, an actual zealot in charge of HHS.
And below him, we have Seema Verma, who is constantly trying to grab power.
She's basically like a suck-up with no soul, a kinda Kellyanne Conway, but of HHS.
And, in fact, on Monday, during that same interview that Dan Diamond did with Terry
Gross, he talks about how on Monday, HHS's email went down.
And the reason it went down is cuz Seema Verma was running an email test for her department
and she didn't tell anybody about it.
And then after they took away responsibilities for her own email, her division's email, she
ran to the White House to complain, in the middle of a pandemic, that she wanted email
responsibilities back.
Those are who are in charge of this response.
It is a president who's only thinking of reelection so much so that he's trying to repress test
results.
Mike Pence, Alex Azar, and Seema Verma.
>> Yeah, yeah, and it's amazing.
So we read this, we think it's important that you know it.
I don't understand, and, look, nobody wants to go through any more investigations.
It's probably a waste of time and it's grueling mentally and emotionally, but how does this
not lead to investigations?
An assertion that he doesn't want the testing because it might look bad is insane, should
be criminal.
And by the way, kind of easy to believe because just like less than two weeks ago, he was
talking about the people on the cruise ship that are being held.
And he said, I was told they wanna take some of those people off, but I don't want the
numbers to develop for something that's not our fault.
So I don't want them to come off.
He said there, I don't want the numbers to be higher.
I would rather leave people in a situation where they won't be getting as good care.
They can potentially expose thousands of other people to the disease.
I don't want the numbers to go up.
And so if there are any communications to this effect, we need to know that.
This should not result in him being removed from the president.
The result should be him being thrown in prison if people have died as a result of his choice.
And by the way, you've probably seen multiple doctors have said that they have started to
conduct testing and been told by the CDC to stop testing people for coronavirus.
Implying that they actually had the kits, but were being told not to use it.
Now, it seems insane that some doctor at the CDC, some official at the CDC would just unilaterally
say, you know what, they're worried about a cluster.
And by the way, lots of people died in the Seattle cluster that the doctor was trying
to investigate and was told not to.
That they would choose to stop that.
It seems as if somebody must have given them a directive to not do that.
And I don't know, I'm just an idiot on the Internet, but someone should be looking into
this.
>> So remember, he also hasn't had himself tested, from what we understand, if we believe
him.
And we know he's been exposed to at least two people who have tested positive.
But it's all about theatrics.
It's all about showmanship and marketing.
And if you don't know the truth, well, then you can't blame Donald Trump.
And today in the press conference, he said, I don't have any responsibility at all for
this.
And the reality is no, you have tremendous responsibility.
And on the live show, I just read comment from one of our members, where they explained
that they seemed to have all of the symptoms of the coronavirus.
And they talk to a doctor.
And the doctor told them, here, I'll quote this person again, call back if my shortness
of breath gets so bad that I can't get complete sentences out.
Because there's no test kits, cuz Trump wouldn't order them, so he didn't look bad.
This is the monster that's in charge.
You know, though, for the folks who know this story and still support Donald Trump, I actually
feel worse for you than Donald Trump.
Cuz you look at all that and you go, so what?
He's my guy, I don't care.
I don't care if people get sick.
I don't care if they get tested.
I don't care if there's no test kits.
The most important thing is we have to protect the vanity of Donald Trump.
That's probably the sickest thing I've ever heard.
>> Yeah, make America great belongs on a few headstones, it sounds like.
>> Remember, the virus doesn't give a damn if you're a Republican, doesn't care if you
are an American guy.
It's not about Republicans, Democrats or Independents.
Everyone gets the virus if they're exposed to it.
So you can cover for Trump all you want.
But if you get it, and especially because we didn't have enough test kits and we didn't
know who to contain, so it's spread and spread and spread.
There's a very clear answer to who was responsible
for that.