As we get closer to, but at least six feet away from, the June 23^rd special election and Republican primary in the New York’s 27^th District, we are being bombarded by commentary and medical advice emanating from the Oval Office.  The president who plays a doctor on TV just loves how much attention his every word gets.

Donald Trump and his medical advisors at Fox News spent weeks promoting a cure for the coronavirus, hydroxychloroquine. You can probably find a greatest hits re-wind somewhere on YouTube which has Trump, Pence, Hannity, Ingraham, Pirro, Carlson and the stars of Fox and Friends telling you about this wonder drug over and over and over again.  Sales of the drug spiked.  Until the drug promoters all, in sync, stopped pushing it.

Perhaps it was because Fox attorneys suggested that there might be some liability exposure after trials of the drug led to a greater rate of death among patients at Veterans Administration hospitals who had taken the drug, compared with those who did not. Perhaps there was some nervousness that some of Trump’s, should I politely say, less well informed supporters might recklessly do anything that their Fearless Leader suggested.  “What do you have to lose?” asked Dr. Trump.

Moving off of the promotion of that drug, the snake oil salesman then suggested in one of his daily TV rallies that it might be good to inject Lysol or perhaps drink some bleach to cure the virus. Was Dr. Birx nodding her agreement (or was that disgust) in the briefing room?  Issues with this quackery emerged much more quickly, and panicked medical professionals and the makers of the cleaning products rushed to warn people that internal use of Lysol or Clorox would probably kill them.

Faced with the pushback, Trump tried to backtrack. He said he was only being sarcastic.  Go back to the tape.  He wasn’t being sarcastic.

But if even for a moment you choose to accept Trump’s standard backtrack that he was only joking, that means that he thinks it is fine to make jokes from his perch in the White House about something that is literally a matter of life and death for about a million Americans, thus far.

Now zoom (the motion, not the software) from Washington to the elections that will occur in NY27 just eight weeks from now. Where do the all-in-for-Trump, no-one-better-than-DJT Republican congressional candidates in that district stand on the issue pretty much the whole country is now focused on, the health and wellbeing of Americans?  What say ye Chris Jacobs, Stefan Mychajliw and Beth Parlato on the bad medical advice and quackery offered daily by Donald J. Trump?

Let me step into the role of spokesperson for the three candidates, opponents in the primary but standing together arm-in-arm as loyal supporters of Donald Trump.

“We are seriously concerned with the health and well-being of the people we seek to represent. We know that nearly one million Americans have contracted COVID-19 so far, and more than 50,000 people have died so far.

“That is why we are standing one hundred percent behind Donald J. Trump, the leader of the Republican Party.

“He has led this country to incredible wealth and prosperity. He alone can fix the problems of this nation.

“That is why we accept anything coming out of the White House as gospel, and that includes Trump’s great leadership in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. From his actions to secure and distribute hundreds of millions of essential personal protection equipment supplies, and hundreds of thousands of ventilators, to his advice about the medications we should take, Trump’s wisdom and authority cannot be questioned.

“As loyal Trumpkin lemmings, we will follow him to the sea.”

Okay, Jacobs, Mychajliw and Parlato did not authorize the previous statement. The fact is they haven’t made any statements about this health care crisis perhaps because (a) they don’t want to appear uninformed but (b) they dare not anger the leader of their party.  Anger of Donald J. Trump is feared even more than the virus.

In the face of the most serious health and economic disaster in the past ninety years, candidates who choose to pledge their fealty to the loose cannon in the White House will set their own life’s legacy. Amen.