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ancianita

(36,070 posts) Sat Apr 4, 2020, 12:31 AM Apr 2020

RACHEL MADDOW: "MR. PRESIDENT..."

Last edited Sat Apr 4, 2020, 06:52 PM - Edit history (4)

EDIT: Third New Video -- Again, I hope Big Media got enough money out of us so we can now see it on YouTube!

From 17:31 to the end mark is the excerpted transcript below.

"... If we had had federal disaster leadership that was as forward thinking as the San Francisco area when they put in place their stay at home order we'd be in a place where the president could be saying what the CA gov is saying now ...which is that the rate of infection might have been slowed enough now that CA might not end up having so many sick people in time that the hospitals could get overwhelmed there.... We could have had that... We don't have that ...

Having some stay at home orders in some places in some states and having it still be 'do whatever you want' in other states is insane. It was insane at the beginning of this, it's absolutely insane this far into it.

We have the worst coronavirus outbreak in the world. We've already got over 7,000 dead Americans. We don't have a treatment. We don't have a vaccine. We don't have a cure. It's going to be a long time before we ever have any of those things. We don't even have testing in this country in any widespread basis. The only thing we've got to try to stop this virus is to keep people from giving it to each other ... that's all we've got...

It is insane that there remains no federal policy in this regard. Having a patchwork policy where it's having some states that stay at home and some states where it's not -- It's like having a pool where there's one section in the pool where it's okay to pee. It's like having an airplane with one section where it's okay to smoke and everything else you're gonna call non-smoking despite what all those people are gonna smell like when they get off that plane....

Why is that, alone, not just fixed tonight. It would take ten words at the podium. It could save thousands of lives...

This disaster has already cost triple the deaths of Katrina, it has already cost a hundred times the deaths of Katrina by this summer by the White House's own estimates if they don't learn that belated lesson now...

Mr. President, there are things that only you can do here. But the most important thing that you can do is put somebody in charge.

You'll love it, because whoever you pick, you can blame that person at the end, when there are still 100,000, or 200,000 dead Americans piled up in the nation's funeral homes and crematoria and cemeteries.

Pick somebody you're looking forward to scapegoating and blaming, and saying it was all their fault from the beginning. I think that we could take that as a country.

If putting somebody in charge who is actually in charge might also mean that we'll keep the numbers that low. Because as long as we don't have a federal response that is being run by anyone, there is no guarantee that the numbers will stay within that massive range that you're talking about. The sky's the limit in terms of what it could be.

I mean, just go back and look at what Geo W Bush did belatedly with Army General Russell Honore. Put an overall command and control officer in place who can

#1 -- announce, on your authority, binding national policy, and firm national guidance to governor and mayors

#2 -- who can federalize, on your authority, all needed supplies and resources and facilities needed to test,
trace,
isolate,
triage,
treat, and ultimately
bury coronavirus victims.

3 -- pick somebody who can oversee on your authority a massive
production,
procurement,
purchasing,
maintenance,
allocation,
distribution and
re-distribution system for those critical resources.

It's going to be a huge effort. You may want to get your son-in-law out of the way here.

You may want to create a disaster response command within the US military to do this, which would be a huge deal.

That said, if you were uncomfortable with being the commander-in-chief of such an effort, because you don't want to be that clearly responsible for it when you ultimately want to blame the person you put in charge, then pick something else to call it and don't make it a combatant command.

But you are going to need to mobilize the defense transportation system to move critical resources around this country.

You're going to actually have to aggressively use and not just cite the Defense Production Act.

And you're going have to have someone very good, moving very quickly, to address the death trap condition that exists right now in senior and congregate living facilities of all kinds, including nursing homes, and
long term care facilities and
veterans' homes, and yes,
jails and prisons.

You're going to have to let a well and truly experienced operations manager take the lead and fix this now.

It is too late already.
But now is better than never.
Now is better than next week.
Yesterday would've been better than today.
But we'll take what we can get.

We can't call it too late. We have to believe that we can still course correct to save some lives.

Just do it already.

Whatever you need to tell yourself to do it.

Just do it...."