This is the Tom Hartman program.

The President and First Lady have been diagnosed with the COVID virus, as has Senator

Mike Lee, one of the Republicans who will be necessary for

the Senate to get any Koney Barrett on the Supreme Court, it's all getting very, very, very interesting. In some ways, I suppose, kind of confusing.

Kelly Lofler, the Republican senator from Georgia,

tweeted out that China is responsible for Donald Trump getting the coronavirus.

There are other countries, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, where in the entire country, over the entire last year, they've only

had a few dozen or a few hundred deaths, no active cases that I know of, no active spreading

going on right now, for for example in New Zealand. I mean

leadership matters and I retweeted Kelly Loeffler's tweet blaming China and pointed

out that irresponsibility is the Republican brand.

I mean, basically, never take responsibility for anything.

This is their worldview.

I'm expecting to hear more of this, you know, that the Republicans are going to try and

spin this around to say,

we're the victims of China.

Well, yeah, you know, the Chinese could have handled this better in the early stages.

We could have handled it better once we knew what it was.

And by the way, we knew what it was in December of last year.

In fact, in the last week of November of last year,

U.S. intelligence notified Israeli intelligence that there was some sort

of a SARS-like, MERS like virus going around in China.

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