Short diary — I think the Burr insider trading story is much bigger than his million dollar stock sale. Behind it lies the corruption and criminality of trump, his cronies and the entire GOP.
Obviously, the administration knew about the seriousness of the Coronavirus pandemic. They were giving briefings to committees in the Senate in January and February. Senators were alarmed enough to give briefings to their donors and adjusting their own stock portfolio for the new age of Coronavirus. All the while, they were downplaying the virus in their public pronouncements, telling the American public that there was no urgent problem, everything was under control and there was no need to make any preparations — at the government level or the personal level. All until March 11 when trump decided to reveal his secrets in a disastrous address from the Oval office, and the S&P 500 had fallen more than 22% off its Feb 19 peak.
The media and Democratic leadership needs to ask these questions and fill the airwaves and social media with these questions and whatever information they can find —
- Obviously, trump and White House staff also got the briefing. Why did they keep lying about Coronavirus? Why did they not mobilize government resources to tackle the pandemic?
- Did the administration deliberately delay the response until members of trump’s inner circle and donors took care of their own business?
- How many of these people adjusted their investment portfolios? How many of the blind trusts magically make trades during late January and mid February? Were they investing in biotech companies while dumping airline stocks? Can we even trace such accounts?
- We should do “contact tracing” on Sen. Burr, Sen. Loeffler, trump, kushner, and other congressional and administration officials — who else in their friends, donor and media circles did they forward the info. to? Like the Coronavirus, how did this insider info spread out from well-connected person to well-connected person? I bet the picture will be ugly.
- Why is it OK for Republican leaders to provide insider information to donors? How many other Republican leaders do it on a routine basis? Why do they put their donors’ wealth above the well-being of the American people? What do they do to enforce the STOCK act?
- We should make it clear to the electorate that all these corrupt actions made the pandemic much worse. we could have been much better prepared if the administration and congress had taken appropriate steps to slow down the virus instead of worrying about their investment portfolios. This is dereliction of duty and a betrayal of the oath of office; millions of American lives will be lost as a result.
Also, it is curious how republicans are dumping on Burr but nor Loeffler and others. Perhaps, they want to replace him anyways. Perhaps, it is a way to distract the public away from the corruption of other republican leaders, trump and his staff and donors. They want to hide the fact that they all had knowledge of the virus but chose to hide it and chose to benefit from it, American lives be damned.
We should stop focusing on Burr only or stop at just calling for his resignation because he sold stocks. The bigger issue is that they all knew and their donors knew but they hid the information from the public. Now lives will be lost. We should keep spreading this meme and question - “On Coronavirus, what did the President know and when did he know it?” (And why did he not do anything about it?)
Remember trump recently said that he knew this was a pandemic long ago. Guess what, he was telling the truth, for once!
Also, remember the weeks when trump kept saying that the Coronavirus is a hoax, perpetrated by Democrats to scare people? Indeed, Democrats were ringing the alarm bells while trump and republicans were using their cudgels to silence them.
And they are still operating in that mode. Deny, hide, lie, blame others, jeopardizing American lives. They are probably still adjusting stock portfolios and affecting stock prices by talking up certain favored companies and crafting stimulus packages tilted towards favorite companies.
We should shout from the rooftops that the rot runs deep in the GOP; this is a corrupt administration and party. They are the swamp. Our parents and grandparents will die so that trump and the GOP could line their pockets. Rage, rage because we know the pandemic is just picking up speed. Within a week or two, we will exceed a million infections and we are still woefully unprepared.