For right now, however, they are still giants. Mulvaney tells the audience that the most successful part of this presidency to date is its push for deregulation of the business world. As a former restaurant owner, he says, he was over-regulated. “[T]he size of the door…fifteen regulations on how the food has to be maintained … even the size of the print on the menu board,” state and federal regulations mandated all of these items, says Mulvaney, making it hard for him to eke out a living. He skips over the real story: that he was not a “small business owner” but a lawyer and shareholder for the fast-casual Mexican chain Salsarita’s Fresh Cantina, which has spread from Charlotte, North Carolina to many east coast states, and that his father ran a multi-million dollar construction firm.[3] Mulvaney has not ever eked out a living. Restaurant regulations, construction regulations, labor regulations—they might protect workers, customers, and homeowners, but they cost money for those at the top of the ownership hierarchy, like the Mulvaneys. He has long shilled for government deregulation. That has meant cutting back on things that did not help his own bottom line, like Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits for workers, and Meals on Wheels programs for the elderly.

Then the conversation turns to the virus. Moore asks Mulvaney what he thinks of CNN and MSNBC’s “fake” claims that the Trump administration was “asleep” in its response to the coronavirus. In the past, Mulvaney has proclaimed himself “one of the original Rush [Limbaugh] Babies!”[4] That devotion to Limbaugh could well be the reason why Mulvaney responds that the whole coronavirus thing is a political plot device used by the media to attempt to discredit the president.

Mulvaney is clearly channeling Rush Limbaugh, claiming that the worry about the virus is a conspiracy to harm Trump, sacrificing all dignity to his king, who will, nonetheless, still have his head. I think this has become the new mantra. Later today, CNN asks the president if he agrees that the coverage of the virus is a leftwing hoax.

Did he answer the question? He did not say that the virus is a hoax, but he does say that CNN is not to be trusted. He reiterates that, “… with the flu, on average, we lose from 26,000 to 78,000 people a year …We haven’t lost anybody yet.  … there have been no deaths in the United States at all. A lot of that is attributable to the fact that we closed the border very early.”[6]

By the end of the day, the idea of the virus as a hoax has clearly had a chance to settle in his mind, and now he is saying it explicitly. At the rally in Charleston, South Carolina, he grabs the podium, swaying under the lights. “Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus,” he tells the crowd. “They have no clue; they don’t have any clue. … And this is their new hoax. But you know we did something that’s been pretty amazing. We have 15 people in this massive country,” he says, referring to the number of reported COVID-19 cases from earlier in the week. By the time he steps off Marine One to speak at his rally, four more people should be added to that count. He then turns to his wildly inconsistent flu claims again, “So a number that nobody heard of that I heard of recently … 35,000 people on average die each year from the flu. … It could go to a 100,000 … and so far we have lost nobody to coronavirus in the United States.”[7]

It feels like the crack in our understanding of how bad this virus is has started to widen. It isn’t clear if it started with Limbaugh, who himself is only a pompous narcissistic mouthpiece for all the hate that this nation has to give. But there it is. You can see it clearly now, the crack in the wall that eventually brings the house down.

We may have a hard time seeing it, but the financial markets have sensed that something is very wrong. This week has been the worst for Wall Street since the Great Recession of 2008-09. The Dow Jones index saw the worst drop in its history today. And the stock sell-off in the US only mirrored what had already happened from Asia through Europe during the course of the day and the week.[8] Companies that successfully rode out the slide this week include Clorox and 3M, manufacturers who make products useful for a viral pandemic, and Universal Corp., a massive tobacco grower and nicotine chemical company. Insurance companies are some of the hardest hit, presumably because investors know coronavirus is not a hoax.[9] Actual people will be headed to actual hospitals and filing actual claims. Also hit are the major airlines and hotel chains. Even within Europe, travel to Italy is dropping dramatically after the Italians declared 200 new cases. Tellingly, some people are canceling trips not because they’re afraid of coronavirus, but because they do not want to be stuck in quarantine.[10]

It is true that right now, we only have a small number of cases in the United States. But two new cases reported today have no clear link to China or any other place that is currently experiencing an outbreak, which means that they got it from somewhere here in America, many times removed from the original host.[11] Mulvaney and the president assure us that they have the very best people working on this. They said a travel ban against the Chinese would stop it. What happens if it’s not just coming from China but Europe or western Asia? The tests issued by the CDC either didn’t work properly or weren’t administered well, the administration did nothing to correct for it, and now, instead of kicking everything into high gear and calling for national unity, they’re labeling it a hoax.[12] They are saying to their supporters that, if you love your president and your nation, you won’t take this virus stuff seriously. Unbelievable. Except that it seems to happen regularly in Trump’s America.

Notes

[1] Charles Sykes, “Stephen Moore Went Down for the Wrong Thing,” Politico, May 2, 2019, https://politi.co/2PFb3hF.

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns4QwN27P58&t=1119

[3] Wayback Machine, “Sen. Mick Mulvaney Latest Salsarita’s Franchisee,” FastCasual.com, March 23, 2009, https://web.archive.org/web/20110710230704/http://www.fastcasual.com/article/99623/Sen-Mick-Mulvaney-latest-Salsarita-s-franchisee.

[4] Michael Grunwald, “Mick the Knife,” Politico, September 1, 2017, http://politi.co/2hWKW5Y.

[5] American Conservative Union, CPAC 2020: An Interview with Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4B-7fZNqCs.

[6] The White House, “Remarks by President Trump Before Marine One Departure,” The White House, February 28, 2020, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-marine-one-departure-84/.

[7] Factbase, Donald Trump Holds a Political Rally in North Charleston, South Carolina – February 28, 2020, 2020, https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-speech-kag-rally-north-charleston-south-carolina-february-28-2020.

[8] LaToya Harding, Louis Ashworth, and Josh White, “US Stocks Suffer Worst Week since Financial Crisis after Seven Days of Losses,” The Telegraph, February 28, 2020, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/02/28/markets-live-latest-news-pound-euro-ftse-100-live-updates/.

[9] Hale Stewart, “The Passive-Aggressive Investor For 2/24-2/28,” Seeking Alpha, March 3, 2020, https://seekingalpha.com/article/4328985-passive-aggressive-investor-for-2-24minus-2-28.

[10] Alice Hancock, Tanya Powley, and Chris Campbell, “Coronavirus Prompts a Crisis for the Travel Industry,” February 28, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/41b6a8ba-5a36-11ea-a528-dd0f971febbc.

[11] ; Erika Towne, “Third Case of COVID-19 Found in Santa Clara County,” The Silicon Valley Voice, February 29, 2020, sec. Public Safety, https://www.svvoice.com/third-case-of-covid-19-found-in-santa-clara-county/.

[12] Caroline Chen et al., “Key Missteps at the CDC Have Set Back Its Ability to Detect the Potential Spread of Coronavirus,” ProPublica, February 28, 2020, https://www.propublica.org/article/cdc-coronavirus-covid-19-test?token=l0i8JndZRzf9U7hmG1DlFV6RjLJo1zYf.

[13] Eustance Huang and Fred Imbert, “Dow Falls 350 Points Friday to Cap the Worst Week for Wall Street since the Financial Crisis,” CNBC, February 27, 2020, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/27/dow-futures-fall-100-points-after-another-massive-rout-amid-coronavirus-fears.html.