Martin Schram: Wanted: Warp speed without warped spin

It is the worst of times, squared. The mass killer – COVID-19 – menaces us all. And America’s 45th president cannot stop beating the dickens out of our democracy.

But our week ended with the Supreme Court interrupting our Friday night to gift us with a burst of much-awaited constitutional good news – our democracy has been constitutionally preserved! The three justices President Donald Trump appointed to the Supreme Court joined their colleagues in rejecting Trump’s desperate and seemingly final hope of legally overthrowing Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. The justices rejected a suit, hastily filed by a Trump Republican ally, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (who has legal problems and may have hoped for a presidential pardon), to overturn the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on grounds the court found baseless.

But our worst of times continues. Day after day, this week, COVID-19 was killing more people in America each day than were killed in the historic attacks of 9/11. And President Donald Trump was spending his days and nights desperately courting, conning or even threatening assorted American officials who were his fellow Republicans, from lowly state reps to highly perched Supreme Court justices – pressuring them all to throw out all the votes in swing states he lost. Because, in case you haven’t heard, he’s damn sure our world-famous democracy is a fraud that’s rigged against him.

Trump was on our news screens 24/7, threatening and making claims, but never producing evidence; which is why even TV news readers are saying he is lying. Too often, since Election Day, America’s president has acted and sounded like one of those banana republic despots we see being cartoonishly portrayed in Hollywood movies.

Like when Trump saw cable news reports that a Reno, Nevada, hospital (Renown Regional Medical Center) had put 47 COVID-19 patients’ beds in the garage because they ran out of rooms. Enraged, Trump took presidential action – he retweeted (without checking it) a wacky claim that it was just a “fake Nevada parking garage hospital.” Then he played his trump card, adding: “Fake election results in Nevada also!”

That must have ignited much mirth in Moscow’s Kremlin, as Vladimir Putin saw his pal promoting Putin’s favorite anti-democracy theme. But lo, TV’s journalists committed journalism, airing a video showing the Reno hospital’s beds in rows in a huge bleak room, beneath a sign painted on a bare concrete overhead beam: “Stop … Caution … Crosswalk … Exit (with an arrow pointing left).”

Still, Thursday evening, Trump was gifted with about as fine a day as he could hope to have in his final days: The Food and Drug Administration advisory board recommended emergency approval of Pfizer’s first and maybe best COVID-19 vaccine, developed in record-quick time by Pfizer under the supervision of Trump’s own Operation Warp Speed. (Another drug firm, Moderna, has developed a similar, seemingly successful vaccine.) Soon, the first of some 3 million doses will be going into Americans’ arms, the first of a two-injection inoculation series.

But before we rush to roll up our sleeves, we were stopped short by braking news that told us life-or-death details we need to know. On Dec. 7, braking news from The New York Times informed us that Trump’s Operation Warp Speed may not have done all it could have to make sure America won’t run out of vaccine before we all are inoculated. The Times reported that when the Trump officials contracted with Pfizer this summer to buy the first 100 million doses (to inoculate 50 million people), the Trump officials didn’t accept Pfizer’s offer to lock in the United States for purchasing the next 200 million doses that would be used after the second quarter of 2021.

At that point, other countries, including the European Union, rushed in and quickly contracted to purchase those next 200 million doses from Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech.

That report stung the White House of the president who has made “America First” his proud populist mantra. Trump ’s White House rushed out a quick presidential executive order, written in generalities and lacking in details, that said it would prioritize vaccines for Americans and it vowed – in some way not as yet explained – to allow vaccines to be shipped to other countries only when there are also enough to inoculate all Americans.

Tuesday morning, on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Operation Warp Speed’s Moncef Slaoui how the U.S. would be able to prioritize Americans when other countries already had signed contracts with Pfizer.

“Frankly, I don’t know, and frankly, I’m staying out of this. I can’t comment,” Slaoui said. “I literally don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Stephanopoulos asked. “… But you’re the chief science adviser for Operation Warp Speed.”

“Our work is, you know, rolling,” Slaoui replied. “… So I don’t know exactly what this order is about.” On Fox News, Slaoui offered this elaboration: “What the White House is doing is what the White House is doing.”

So it goes. Even in the best week of these unparalleled worst of times, Trump’s Operation Warp Speed has been made to appear like it is functioning as Operation Warped Spin.

Frightened Americans may have to wait for President Joe Biden to tell us those life-or-death details we need to know.