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The following recording may contain explicit language. I can't get more explicit than may.

Let's just say it may.

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It's March 13th, 2020. From slate, it's the gist I might pass go.

There is an old Chinese curse.

May you live in interesting times. There is a new Chinese curse. It is the COVID-19 virus.

It's as if the Chinese were thinking, I don't know if they all got the subtle implication of the interesting times bit.

So we live in an age.

When we can't expect a president to be good, competent or accountable.

But man, if we can't get the play by play and tic-toc of what the exact contours of his badness and competence or unaccountability are.

The president, apart from having several personality flaws that hinder him from acting in the interests of the people,

also is at bottom a poor, poor communicator.

Now it might seem that with his rallies and the delight he instills in his crowds,

that he's at least a competent communicator, but he isn't.

Because he can't make a simple case or form simple declarative sentences.

Compound those failings with the fact that his instincts are to say the attention getting thing rather than the proper thing.

And we have the disaster that we're seeing before us.

...