I’ve never been much of a Howard Dean fan, but on the other hand, I’ve never actually disliked him either. He was just another Hillary surrogate and talking head, nothing great but nothing terrible, and unlike Trump surrogates at least he stayed on point and answered questions.
Not anymore. As of now, he’s pretty high up on my shit list. The good Dr. Dean was generous with his ridicule for Rudy Giuliani for talking about Hillary Clinton’s health. Granted that Giuliani is not a doctor, and deserved the scorn. But he also heaped scorn on the licensed MD’s on Fox who bought into the narrative, and started diagnosing her on the air. He said no physician should ever formulate a diagnosis on a patient they hadn’t personally examined. And then came this;
What in the hell happened to “never diagnose a patient you haven’t personally examined”? Why go there at all? People sniffle all the time. I’ve never used recreational drugs, I don’t even like to take aspirin for an ache. But with the weather here in Vegas cooling off, the grass and pollen levels are up, and my allergies have me sniffling pretty much all day. Does this mean that I’m a full blown tootski addict? It’s ridiculous on the face of it.
Plain pure and simple, he screwed up. And he had the chance to clean up his mess, and instead decided to double down. In an interview with Kate Snow this morning on MSNBC he was asked about the tweet;
In an interview with MSNBC's Kate Snow Tuesday, Dean acknowledged it's unlikely that 70-year-old Trump has a cocaine habit, but he didn't rule it out.
"It's something I think it'd be interesting to ask him and see if he ever had a problem with that," Dean said.
He added he wouldn't delete the tweet.
There are a couple of serious problems with this. First of all, as far as I’m concerned it’s nothing short of personal slander. You can damn The Orange Julius for many things, and I’ve done my share of that, but to claim that the man, who doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink and whose greatest weakness seems to be fatty food as a coke freak is ridiculous. He has been in the public spotlight for 40 years, if he had a cocaine habit, we would have known it long ago.
The other problem is just as bad. For months the Clinton campaign has righteously commented on the smear tactics of Trump and his surrogates, and they were right to do so. Up until now. Now, one of Clinton’s surrogates has gratuitously and needlessly gotten into the mud and rolled around in the most outrageous manner, their moral high ground is gone. The Clinton camp needs to disavow and condemn this remark, and the sooner the better. And then they have to have a serious chat with Howard Dean about the issue of messaging.
As for me? Until Dr. Howard Dean recants that tweet, deletes it and apologizes for his conduct, I will be changing the channel every time his face shows up. I no longer want to hear anything he has to say.
Thanks as always for reading!