Remember, Trump Created Dr Fauci -- And By The Way, Dr Birx

Ed Driscoll at Instapundit quotes a James Taranto piece at the Wall Street Journal behind a paywall:

In April 2020, businesses in Georgia were shuttered by government decree as in most of the rest of the country. [Gov Brian] Kemp was hearing from desperate entrepreneurs: “ ‘Look man, we’re losing everything we’ve got. We can’t keep doing this.’ And I really felt like there was a lot of people fixin’ to revolt against the government.”

The Trump administration “had that damn graph or matrix or whatever that you had to fit into to be able to do certain things,” Mr. Kemp recalls. “Your cases had to be going down and whatever. Well, we felt like we met the matrix, and so I decided to move forward and open up.” He alerted Vice President Mike Pence, who headed the White House’s coronavirus task force, before publicly announcing his intentions on April 20.

That afternoon Mr. Trump called Mr. Kemp, “and he was furious.” Mr. Kemp recounts the conversation as follows:

“Look, the national media’s all over me about letting you do this,” Mr. Trump said. “And they’re saying you don’t meet whatever.”

Mr. Kemp replied: “Well, Mr. President, we sent your team everything, and they knew what we were doing. You’ve been saying the whole pandemic you trust the governors because we’re closest to the people. Just tell them you may not like what I’m doing, but you’re trusting me because I’m the governor of Georgia and leave it at that. I’ll take the heat.”

“Well, see what you can do,” the president said. “Hair salons aren’t essential and bowling alleys, tattoo parlors aren’t essential.”

“With all due respect, those are our people,” Mr. Kemp said. “They’re the people that elected us. They’re the people that are wondering who’s fighting for them. We’re fixin’ to lose them over this, because they’re about to lose everything. They are not going to sit in their basement and lose everything they got over a virus.”

A month ago, I posted a timeline of Trump's early actions on the pandemic.

During March 2020, the hospital ship Comfort was ordered to New York, and the Mercy was ordered to Los Angeles as part of the federal government's initial response to the COVID pandemic. On March 16 of that year, President Trump declared a national emergency, and under the theme "15 days to slow the spread", he endorsed the quasi-national lockdowns ordered by state and local health departments, which famously lasted much longer than 15 days.

If we were simply going to take 15 days to slow the spread, the lockdowns should have ended on March 31. But by then, Trump had ordered the hospital ships to New York and LA, and by just April 7, the US Navy was complaining there weren't enough COVID patients to go around. By April 27, the hospital ships were ordered back to their home ports, having proven completely unnecessary. By April 20, Gov Kemp, if nobody in the White House, had gotten the message. The WSJ piece goes on,

Mr. Trump publicly attacked Mr. Kemp: “He went on the news at 5 o’clock and just absolutely trashed me. . . . Then the local media’s all over me—it was brutal.” The president was still holding daily press briefings on Covid. “After running over me with the bus on Monday, he backed over me on Tuesday,” Mr. Kemp says. “I could either back down and look weak and lose all respect with the legislators and get hammered in the media, or I could just say, ‘You know what? Screw it, we’re holding the line. We’re going to do what’s right.’ ” He chose the latter course. “Then on Wednesday, him and [Anthony] Fauci did it again, but at that point it didn’t really matter. The damage had already been done there, for me anyway.”

There can be no question that, in nearly three years hindsight, Kemp had things right. Interestingly, Kemp was ahead of even Gov DeSantis:

At that point, Florida was still shut down. Mr. DeSantis issued his first reopening order on April 29, nine days after Mr. Kemp’s. On April 28, the Florida governor had visited the White House, where, as CNN reported, “he made sure to compliment the President and his handling of the crisis, praise Trump returned in spades.”

Three years later, here’s the thanks Mr. DeSantis gets: This Wednesday Mr. Trump issued a statement excoriating “Ron DeSanctimonious” as “a big Lockdown Governor on the China Virus.” As Mr. Trump now tells the tale, “other Republican Governors did MUCH BETTER than Ron and, because I allowed them this ‘freedom,’ never closed their States. Remember, I left that decision up to the Governors!”

Of course, Dr Fauci himself takes the line that he was just making science-based recommendations to the president, while Trump is now saying he left things up to the governors. But let's face it, Trump isn't stupid -- if nothing else, he knows how to make money, and he knows how to run for US president as a rank amateur to politics and get himself elected. So why didn't it dawn on him by late March or early April that the predictions of the public health establishment weren't being borne out?

There can be no question that Trump was afraid not just of Dr Fauci, but perhaps even more afraid of Dr Birx. He let them bully him, when he should have been pressing them for actual numbers vis-a-vis the predictions of their models and beginning to hold them accountable.

I've read -- it was a long time ago, and I can't remember who wrote it or where -- that what cost Gerald Ford the 1976 election was the 1975 assassination attempt by former Manson cultist Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, followed by a second attempt by Sara Jane Moore three weeks later. That two flaky women would be able to come so close to assassinating him was, in the opinion of that writer, a subconscious cue that irreparably damaged Ford's credibility.

I don't necessasrily endorse that view, but when I think of a situation where Dr Fauci, who for his entire career was able to convince people that rather than being gauche, he was actually authentic, and Dr Birx, who was Nurse Ratched in frumpy scarves, were able to convince the country that Donald Trump was an unscientific bumpkin, I've got to think there was some equivalent subliminal prompt, and I do think it cost Trump the 2020 election.

But think about it. Trump was terrified of Dr Birx, I have no doubt. But as soon as someone called her on the family visit she had at Thanksgiving that year, something that was prohibited to the plebs as a potential superspreader event, she skedaddled. Big threat. He could have fired her sooner, on better grounds, I'm sure.

Trump's COVID calls were catastrophic. For now, I'm betting DeSantis is smarter, he's ruthless, and he's even a bit mean. My money's on DeSantis or someone like him.