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Monday, March 30, 2020

Spinning Nonsense

At his last briefing on the virus, President Trump said that he had learned that some hospitals in New York that are consistently full had gone from using 10-20 thousand face masks per week to using 300 thousand per week.  The President then said that the increase sounded incredible and that local authorities had to investigate what was going on and if face masks were walking out the back door.  Many in the mainstream media portrayed this as an attack by the President on the people working in the hospitals.  They said that in the midst of all the work these folks are doing, the President should not attack them.  Unbelievable!

Think about it.  The idea that someone in New York might be stealing these face masks which are in such short supply in order to make a killing by reselling them is not very surprising.  It sounds tailor made for organized crime.  All it would take is for the crime family to buy off some of the supply personnel in the hospital to siphon off large numbers of masks and send them "out the back door".  Indeed, if this is happening, the people who suffer most as the result are the hospital employees.  These masks are for their protection.  If, by focusing on the dramatic usage of these masks, Trump can stop their theft, then the President is helping the hospital employees, not attacking them.

But even more than who is helped and who is hurt, the issue is whether or not local authorities should look into whether masks and other supplies are being stolen.  Isn't that an activity that we would want to stop if possible?  Will the media now tell us that it is racist or sexist or something else to try to prevent criminal acts that leave hospitals without needed supplies?

I doubt we have ever had a President who has as much knowledge about how things go on many jobs in New York where expensive supplies are stored.  The level of theft on construction jobs, especially public construction jubs in the city is very high.  I know, I work in that field for many decades.  Trump has a lot of first hand experience with this problem as well.

My guess is that over 90% of the open minded people watching the briefing were glad to hear that Trump wanted to make sure that supplies weren't being stolen.  Sure, there are those who hate Trump to such an extent that no matter what he wants to do they think he is wrong.  If he asks for an investigation into possible stolen masks, he is attacking the employees.  Were he not to seek such an investigation, they would say he couldn't manage the situation well.  But I'm not talking about those for whom Trump can do nothing right.  I'm talking about average Americans who understand how the world works.  They get it, and I'm sure they're happy to know that the feds are looking out for all of us.  

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