Providence Regional Everett has seen double digit cases of coronavirus. The medical director worries about whats coming. What do we do if we have a limited number of ventilaors and more patients than ventilators available . What do we do if we have more patients than beds available . That was four years ago today. And yet, republicans ask, are you better off than you were then . You know, back when countless people were dying, millions were losing their jobs and the economy was in free fall . Also tonight, the trump gang takeover of the rnc. Installing lackies and family members, all of them election deniers. And cardcarrying members of the cult. Plus, theres a good chance that you or your kids spent hours on tiktok. Now, after a bipartisan house vote today, it could be on the verge of being banned in the usa. But we begin tonight with reality and a question. The reality is this, after last night, it is officially a trump versus biden race. And now the question, its the one question Trump Supporters keep wanting to ask. So okay, lets ask it. Are you better off now than you were four years ago . You know, the old Ronald Reagan query from the 1980 campaign. Well, four years ago, to the day, this was our world. Breaking news tonight, President Trump declaring the coronavirus a national emergency. The move freeing billions for the fight as America Contracts to slow the rapidlyspreading pandemic. The number of cases in the u. S. Rising to near 2,000. At least 41 deaths. All schools closing and n a growing number of states. Millions of students impacted. Houses of worship suspending services. Landmarks, theme parks, sporting events and concerts shutting down. The chaos at Grocery Store lines where they stretch out the door, shelves cleared out. Covid19 was officially declared a pandemic exactly four years ago. And things havent been the same since. It was a scary time. And for the long haulers and those with elderly loved ones, it still is four years later. What made the outbreak especially dangerous was the fact that americas president at the time, our germaphobe in chief, told reporter bob woodward he knew how bad it was, but he didnt tell us. Here is donald trump on february 7th, 2020, just two days after the senate voted to acquit him on both articles in his first of two impeachment trials. It goes through air, bob. Thats always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch you dont have to touch things, right . But the air, you just breathe the air. Thats how its passed. And so thats a very tricky one. Thats a very delicate one. Its also more deadly than your you know, your even your strenuous flus. So if trump said that in february, that means he knew that the virus was a lot more serious than he let on publicly, even before america went into lockdown. But wood ward didnt share that bomb shell until six months later when his new book came out. After the u. S. Surpassed 6 million cases. In all that time, trump lied to the American People about the dangers of covid. Its going to disappear. One day its like a miracle, it will disappear. Its fading away. Its going to fade away. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous whether its ultra violate or just very powerful light, and i think you said that hasnt been checked but youre going to test it. Supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. Then i see the disinfectant knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do Something Like that by Injection Inside or almost a cleaning. Wow. Well, as we mark the fouryear anniversary of the pandemic, we must note that since march of 2020, more than 1 Million People have died in the u. S. Due to covid. We just need to sit with this number. For the love of god, we should at least remember it. Because history could easily repeat itself in a very bad way. As of last night, trump and biden are officially their partys presumptive nominees. So we need to take a hard look at these candidates. Their records. Their accomplishments. And the choice ahead of us. And, yes, where they stand on the safety and well being of every individual american. Were also in a unique position to evaluate these men because both of them have been president. We can compare their actual presidencies rather than vote based on their promises. Which era do you want to relive, the chaotic, frankly four years of crazy tweets, migrant kids ripped from their parent arms, random fights with our allies and a million bodies on the ground due to covid. The bodies stacked up in refrigerated trucks because the hospitals ran out of room. The states fighting over ventilators. The old people dying by themselves and saying their goodbyes on ipads, the economy literally collapsing and all of us stuck in our homes for a year . Kids having to graduate from high school and college on zoom. Or the biden era, where the president is old. Yes, and set in his ways and some of his policies infuriating. But at least hes sane and a grownup and capable of being reasoned with and pushed to change his policies. It is a serious question. Does anybody think that reliving the trump era is a good idea or something america would even survive . What about the americans who didnt survive. What would they think . Trump didnt want to deal with a Public Health catastrophe. He didnt want to take the blame or get bad press. So instead, he spent months pushing crack science. Taking advice from Snake Oil Salesmen instead of Public Health experts. He mainstreamed the Antivax Movement which is going so strong today that we are facing Measles Outbreaks among unvaccinated children. Rfk jr. Is back embarrassing his family and running as an antivax president ial candidate. Trump turned against vaccines even though it was his own Operation Warp speed that spawned the ones for covid. He elevated extremist politicians like ron desantis along with junk science and disinformation and horse dewormer, fake covid cures. Lets face it, the Trump Administration fueled the crisis and botched americas response. And that is the main reason he was not reelected. And they knew he would lose because of it. By june of 2020, even trump knew that his handling of covid was the reason he was not going to win. So what did he do right before the election . He unleashed roger stone, his sleazy friend with the nixon tattoo on his back who was later convicted of Witness Tampering and lying to congress. To announce the big lie. Lets just hope were celebrating. I suspect it will be i really do suspect it will be up in the air. When that happens the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine tenths of the law. We won. Sorry. [ bleep ] you. Youre wrong. Joining me now is matthew dowd, former republican strategist and dr. Uche blk blackstock and author of legacy a black physician reckons with racism in medicine. Thank you both for being here. Dr. , uche blackstock, as a physician, as a medical professional, how do you feel in your spirit when people literally seem to have forgotten the million covid dead and try to remember the trump era as somehow a good time. Well, joy, thank you so much for having me on. And watching that compilation of videos was just so incredibly sobering. I will tell you that that leak was the first time in my life i felt scared to go to work. It wasnt just me. It was all of my colleagues because we had an uncontrollable virus and a president who could not be controlled and who was not following the Public Health the knowledge, the foundation of knowledge thats out there about how viruses spread. And so, you know, it was so incredibly scary. Many of us just we get home from work and have to disrobe and we couldnt touch our family members. And then at work, we were caring for our very, very sick patients. And they were coming in actually all different ages. All different medical problems. We were seeing kind of devastation that we had never, ever seen before, not in our life time and even our older colleagues had never, ever seen before. So, it is so Heart Breaking that so many of those deaths could have been prevented if that knowledge had been disseminated and if the virus had been acted on in an evidencebased manner, in a way that we actually knew we had the tools. They just were not rolled out in the way they should have been. Yeah. Let me play i just want to play this, another piece of trump. This is donald trump. He was talking about trying matthew dowd, to get a ship full of people who might have been impacted by covid, to keep them on the ship, to keep the number of dead down so that his so he wouldnt be harmed politically by their deaths. Take a listen. They would like to have the people come off. I would rather have the people stay, but i go with them. I told them to make the final decision. I would rather because i like the numbers being where they are, i dont need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasnt our fault. And it wasnt the fault of the people on the ship either. Okay. It wasnt their fault either. And theyre mostly americans. So, i can live either way with it. I would rather have them stay on personally. Matthew dowd, you are working republican politics back during the george w. Bush era. I read a lot of things about george w. Bush. I cant imagine him saying that. I cant imagine bill clinton saying that. I cant imagine barack obama or any other american president saying that. I cant imagine Ronald Reagan saying that. Really was against him. But the reality is you know better than any of the rest of us here having worked at the president ial level the fiduciary duty of a president is to protect the American People from things like a pandemic. That is when a president is supposed to step up the most. It is when they lead the most and unite the country. What you just saw there was something other than that. Can you explain to me how if 9 11 changed all of our lives and the way we travel and everything about our lives when we get on a plane, how is it that people have blown off the fact that donald trump utterly failed at that fundamental duty of a president and think he should be president again . Well, i think this conversation is so important. And it leads us to the bigger part of this conversation, which is the foundations of democracy have actually shaken because of this. Because democracy depends on the idea that we all agree on The Common Good. That we all agree that theres some common good that our leaders are supposed to actually help achieve based on a common set of facts. Now, george bush and i disagreed with him and broke with him related to the war and the aftermath of that. But george bush believed in The Common Good of the United States of america. And believed in the common set of facts. How he applied those we can argue with and we could debate and all of that. Donald trump believes in neither one. Donald trump does not believe in The Common Good. And donald trump does not believe in a common set of facts. And this health issue, youre so right, is one of the primary responsibilities of president is to protect us both from problems within our country and from outside our country. And his only his unbelievable narcissism as evidenced by that clip shows that he has no idea or no even sense he wants to do that. And everything hes done since then is a manifestation of that Personality Trait or that what he believes in this. And this applies not only to health issues. This applies to belief in facts on the economy and this beliefs in facts related to Global Climate change, all of which the republicans dispute. I mean, they actually think people like dr. Blackstock are the problem because they actually speak in facts and evidence and all that. And theyve decided that they are an antiscience party. Thats what they fundamentally decided here. That shakes our democracy. But the except when it comes to themselves, dr. Blackstock because donald trump almost died from covid. Mark meadows said in his book he came very close to death. When he did that stunt, that awful stunt when he came and ripped his mask off in front of the white house, pulled his mask off standing on the balcony. He was typhoid trump, Spreading Covid to guests at the white house, Secret Service agents, he tried like a superhero and wanted to wear a superman shirt under his shirt but didnt throw his dignity out the window by doing that, he was treated with every experimental drug imaginable. He didnt take chances with his own health. He survived because of science. Right. Exactly. I mean, he had the privilege of knowing that as president of the United States he had access to every lifesaving drug that was available for covid. At that time, the same couldnt have been said for all other americans. And so, that demonstration of irresponsibility was a powerfully negative message to send to the public. I remember seeing him in that video and saying he does not look good. That man is sweaty. He is breathing very, very quickly. That took so much energy for him to get up there and just to show himself like that. But he was very, very lucky because even before he was infected with covid, i said to myself, if he gets covid, he is high risk. That man could die. And he was very lucky, very, very lucky that didnt happen to him. But it happened to so many other americans who did not have the access and the resources that the president of the United States has. You know, and matthew, i think about the cynical politicians he spawned. I mean, ron desantis barely got elected governor. But as governor, he wielded covid like a sword. He made sure that affluent and wealthy older floridians got the vaccine, but then with held it from others. Popup places where people had to stand in line and nearly die trying to get these special secret cures, et cetera. He hired a Surgeon General who is now allowing measles to spret in the state of florida, unmasked himself in front of people who had cancer. Who doesnt care if he causes them to be ill. Hes unleashed this whole thing and then they lie that what do you think when you hear people then credit donald trump for the stimulus check they got to prevent themselves from falling completely under financially, that nancy pelosi gave them to save them from trumps failure and then they have the nerve to credit trump for that. There wouldnt have been a stimi if he hadnt screwed up the response to covid. They wouldnt have needed it. And you i had this conversation with a lot of i live in texas. Im around a lot of Trump Supporters. You have this conversation with them and then you say do you know the death rate among in republican areas by covid is twice as high as it is in other areas. Twice as high. Why is that, because they refused to get vaccinated. Correct. To me its like a bank robber that points a gun at their own head and says give me the money or ill shoot. Thats what theyre doing. Thats what is amazing about this. But, i think we have to keep in mind, this is donald trump. Im going to keep emphasizing. This is donald trump. The problem is 40 or so of the country has been bought into this. 40 of the country has been bought into this. So when it comes time, again like people like dr. Blackstock and our other Healthcare Providers to give information to the public that will save lives that will help peoples health, they refuse it. And that is a huge destructive problem for our institutions. They no longer they rather call dr. Google, right, search something on google to find out the cure for something as opposed to talk to a medical professional. And thats a problem thats going to affect every one of us. Absolutely. And the next pandemic, god forbid that person is in the white house again, millions of people will die. There are a lot of people right now who are insisting that he needs to be president again who will be among them. Then what will you say . What will you say if its your family, if its your mom, your grandma, you wanted him back in there to be incompetent again when he failed the first time. You got one job as president. He failed. And if youre saying that was a better era, you are lying because it is not true. Dr. Uche blackstock. Thank you. Matthew is sticking around with us. Up next on the reidout, trump and his cronies purged the rnc to install loyalists and family members. What could possibly go wrong. The reidout continues after this. Ntinues after this shop etsy until april 15th and get up to 30 off thoughtful pieces made by real people to brighten your home. Save on lighting, furniture, gifts and more. When you need just the thing to make your space feel like new. Etsy has it. Hi, im kim, and i lost 67 pounds on golo. When i was diagnosed with breast cancer, food became my comfort. I didnt think i looked pretty anymore, so i let myself go. Ive seen the golo commercials for a while. 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