By David K. Shipler
President Trump’s frequent lies
have been disorienting enough during his three years in office, and especially
risky during the coronavirus epidemic. Now he is moving more dramatically across
the line into censoring skilled professionals in government. This imposes an implicit threat that some who counter his falsehoods with
truth could lose their jobs.
Sunday, when a reporter asked Dr.
Anthony Fauci about hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for COVID-19,
Trump interrupted, stepped forward, blocked Fauci from answering, and let stand
his own disjointed and ill-informed answer. Trump did not caution against
self-medicating, which has already killed one man in Arizona, and made no
reference to the warnings by medical experts that the drug can have deadly side
effects in patients with cardiac problems.
Last Thursday, Capt. Brett E.
Crozier was removed as skipper of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt after
sending an urgent, four-page letter to about thirty Navy officials pleading for
rapid help in relocating thousands of crew members ashore amid a spreading
infection of COVID-19 on the ship. The appeal, leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle, might have
bypassed Crozier’s immediate superior, a violation of military protocol. But the
uniformed Navy wanted a careful investigation, not the summary dismissal executed
by Trump’s civilian appointee, acting Navy Secretary, Thomas B. Modly, who told
a colleague, “Breaking news: Trump wants him fired,” according to David
Ignatius of The Washington Post. (Modly later resigned after flying all the way to Guam to insult and lambaste Crozier to the crew. How does Trump come up with these people?)
Then late Friday, Trump fired the
inspector general of the intelligence community, Michael K. Atkinson, for
obeying the law in notifying Congress of the whistleblower’s complaint in the
Ukraine case that led to the president’s impeachment. Dozens of inspectors
general populate government agencies as supposedly independent watchdogs. Their
reports of errors, misdeeds, fraud, and corruption have been key to restricting
the malfeasance of powerful officials. And Atkinson was required by statute to
provide the notification if he found the complaint credible, which it obviously
turned out to be.
