Now Watch This Drive

One of the forgotten things about the Bush era was just how dumb and incurious he was. Just how similar he actually was to Trump. They are not the same and I am not claiming that, but making fun of Bush for saying *stupid shit* was a constant, even post-9/11. One of those horrible Slate guys even made "Bushisms" a thing and published a couple of books of them. The thing is much of the parody of Bush was SNL-style parody, making the object lovable character without actually cutting them, but Bush's ridiculous verbal utterances weren't just verbal slips or funny malapropisms. Bush said a lot of dangerously stupid shit! And the subtext of a lot of the campaign 2000 and even after coverage of Bush was along the lines of, does it really matter if our president is dumb as a box of rocks? Our great pundits concluded that, no, it doesn't matter at all! Have a beer with the guy who doesn't drink! Then after 9/11 they focused on building him up as a secret genius. But Bush was dumb as a stump, incurious, and didn't have patience for his presidential daily briefings. Either.

Very brave of the NYT to ask questions like "Is this man dangerously stupid?" on (checks notes) the 1193rd day of his presidency. https://t.co/3p6DsGGnyu

— Mass for Shut-ins (is a podcast) (@edburmila) April 27, 2020

Ah, well, nevertheless.

(CNN)President Donald Trump received more than a dozen warnings about the coronavirus outbreak in daily briefings in January and February, but continued to downplay the virus' threat and severity, the Washington Post reported Monday.
Citing current and former US officials, the paper reported that the warnings came in the President's Daily Brief, a summary of intelligence reports from the various agencies, which tracked the virus' proliferation, highlighted China's inaccurate characterization of the disease and its death toll and warned of potential widespread ramifications related to the pandemic.
Officials told the Post that the President, who frequently forgoes the briefings and has become impatient with the summaries of the brief he now receives a couple of times per week, did not seem to absorb the warnings. They added that focused efforts tracking the virus were on par with prior instances of monitoring security threats, including active terrorism and international clashes.