Background Briefing: April 5, 2020

 

After Showing His Face in Public, the Destructive Role Jared Kushner Plays Behind the Scene

We begin as we head into what is expected to be the grimmest week so far as the death toll from COVID-19 mounts and our ill-prepared health care system cracks under the strain of insufficient protective equipment for healthcare workers in overcrowded ICU’s which are expected to run out of life-or-death ventilators. Ironically it is thanks to China, were the outbreak began as a result of an appetite for eating wild animals and where the Communist government’s grip on secrecy allowed its spread around the world, that our worst hot spot New York is getting 1,000 ventilators. And while is has always been clear that President Trump has made not just bad decisions, but ones that have invariably worsened the situation, and when he reluctantly does the right thing, it only happens after weeks of pleading from the few experts he listens to and even then when he agrees to urge all Americans to wear face masks, he announces that he won’t wear one. But now we are learning that his arrogant dilettante of a son-in-law Jared Kushner has been playing an equally destructive role behind the scenes running a shadow crisis response team while sending the CDC and FEMA on whimsical half-baked dead-end missions costing time and lives. Joining us to assess the damage is Paul Waldman, a columnist at The Washington Post’s Plum Line who is a senior writer at The American Prospect. We discuss his latest article at The Washington Post “Trump’s ignorant son-in-law in running the coronavirus response. That’s unacceptable” and how Kushner and his coterie of entitled fraternity boys are impeding the flow of equipment by privatizing the supply chain which has led to unnecessary delays and price-gouging at the same time the administration is not employing the world’s best disaster response network meant to deal with a national security crisis, the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency.

 

Trump Stiffs the American Consumer to Help Big Oil

Then we examine a glaring naked example of where Trump’s true loyalties are as he stiffs the American people and those who voted for him while rewarding big business, in this case the multinational oil companies and shale oil frackers in Texas. By calling on Saudi Arabia and Russia to stop flooding the oil market and lowering the price of gas, Trump is violating a fundamental law of politics by raising the price of gas to hurt the American consumer at the pump during a recession. We look into the pathetic silence from our political opposition and even those who oppose fracking, and speak with veteran energy expert David Freeman, who headed the TVA, New York Power, the LA DWP and was the State energy czar who rescued California from Enron and company.

The Silence of Democratic Lambs as Trump Leads Them to Slaughter

Then finally we investigate why the Democrats are silent in the face of Trump’s shafting of the American people and his outrageous declaration of war against the foundation of our democracy by insisting that there will only be in-person voting in November, meaning people will have to risk their lives to vote. And that every Democrat who shows up to vote will have to show a photo ID. Robert Creamer, a long-time Democratic strategist and organizer and author of Stand up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, joins us to discuss the need for Democrats to unite and fight back against Trump’s flagrant use of an unprecedented public health crisis to ensure his own reelection by foul means.