the single most consequential thing that naive ‘orange man bad’ heuristics would have mislead you on is probably Operation Warp Speed, and since he retroactively went anti-vax and appointed an essential oils crank to HHS, it’s not even that big a miss. - ThreadSky

opinionhaver.bsky.social • 7 days ago

the single most consequential thing that naive ‘orange man bad’ heuristics would have mislead you on is probably Operation Warp Speed, and since he retroactively went anti-vax and appointed an essential oils crank to HHS, it’s not even that big a miss.

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javi.beesky.social•6 days ago

not naive

onionfuturewgkta.bsky.social•7 days ago

And pretty soon we’ll be able to say the same about Powell, the other major “Orange Man… good?” decision.

profchildermass.bsky.social•7 days ago

Vitamin A and cod liver oil for Measles works absolute wonders says the antivax grifter secretary. At least he didn't recommend a name brand supplement provider, but I'm sure that's coming.

savannahcampaign.bsky.social•7 days ago

Naming it Operation Warp Speed was a big big mistake tho. People thought they hastily invented the vaccines in the months from Warp Speed starting to the vaccines being deployed not that they were testing them

camasonian.bsky.social•7 days ago

It wasn't even the testing. That was Pfizer and Moderna.

Mainly it was fronting the money for rapid scale-up of manufacture and giving the pharma companies guaranteed sales.

But Congress actually did that, not Trump.

savannahcampaign.bsky.social•7 days ago

Still think giving the development of something that goes inside the human body a name that implies the process will be moving hastily is pretty stupid

dwilliamesq.bsky.social•7 days ago

I don’t know. It never bothered me, anyway. I understood that they meant they were trying to deploy it as quickly as reasonably possible. I think that, like me, the people naming it were just unaware of all the distrust that would be out there.

artsulselva.bsky.social•7 days ago

It turns out that if the President is bad, that is a bad thing

voteblue4vr.bsky.social•7 days ago

It was truly the ONLY thing that went well in his first administration and his instincts are so poor he literally killed that actual win by going w/ the anti-vax rhetoric.

dissenterbedamned.bsky.social•6 days ago

This is why I follow stupid people, because where else will you get deep dives into "is everything trump does TRULY bad? maybe we should examine that statement more closely?"

trexpushups.bsky.social•7 days ago

And you could even argue yourself into "I trust Fauci and the CDC because orange man did not purge them" to avoid that miss.

captainahab.bsky.social•7 days ago

I think the Singapore summit was also good, it gave space and support to Moon and allowed him to pursue detente.

northeasternblot.bsky.social•7 days ago

It's honestly strange that the literal one thing Trump supporters bucked him on was vaccines, the one good thing Trump did support.

It's like his supporters want evil and rebel when he accidentally does good.

camasonian.bsky.social•7 days ago

Operation Warp Speed was actually Congress. Trump just piggy-backed in at the end to get credit.

Before he went anti-vax.

b00ster.bsky.social•7 days ago

It took time for the clear preference of his base to overwhelm his clean freak psychology and fear of germs. It’s actually due to “orange man bad” being more critically damped than Trump himself, a subtle tuning issue.

mattcasey.bsky.social•7 days ago

Potentially also him trying to get rid of the penny, but pennies sort of depict a man in orange, so that muddies the waters a bit

opinionhaver.bsky.social•7 days ago

There’s a few other ones like Mnuchin, or Space Force, but that’s probably the largest. And not only does ‘Orange man bad’ have a pretty high hit-rate, its accuracy is increasing as its largest error category “relatively normal thing others would do covered hysterically because of Trump” disappears

grjohnson.bsky.social•7 days ago

Wait we pro-Space Force now?

bennotten.bsky.social•7 days ago

Mnuchin? I assume you mean Powell here. Mnuchin wasn't notably awful, but wouldn't say he was an exception.

whiskeyandwry.bsky.social•7 days ago

People didn't think Powell was going to be bad so it's not a miss.

bennotten.bsky.social•7 days ago

The idea here is that if your only heuristic was "orange man bad," then you would've said Powell was bad. The nuanced take was correct here, I agree.

golikehellmachine.com•7 days ago

the main credit mnuchin gets (and it’s worth crediting!) is that when wyden gave him a back of the napkin estimate for how much covid support americans needed, mnuchin didn’t blink and sold it to trump, which an average republican cabinet secretary wouldn’t have done

jakechristie.bsky.social•7 days ago

we really would have faced economic doom if Trump picked an ideologue and not just a rich guy he knew

inboundike.bsky.social•6 days ago

Would have been an interesting counterfactual if he did and was left holding the bag throughout 2020…

michael.is-post.ing•7 days ago

he’s credited in some pretty good movies too

thepines.bsky.social•7 days ago

He does deserve credit for that for sure that really was huge.

nkfinity.bsky.social•7 days ago

Huh this is the first time hearing this story. Do you have a place where I can read in further detail?

golikehellmachine.com•7 days ago

alas, all paywalled that i can find

arcknightt.bsky.social•7 days ago

https://www.ideastream.org/2025-01-14/in-it-takes-chutzpah-democratic-sen-wyden-lays-out-a-path-for-progressive-change seems to talk about it.

nkfinity.bsky.social•7 days ago

I’ll believe you. Another reason why Wyden is the GOAT. Just not many workhorses like him left in Congress…

smegmaticsmotrich.bsky.social•6 days ago

There was a big pants-shitting about Yellen/Powell

mercenary29.bsky.social•7 days ago

Out of pure spite, I want the next Dem president to rename Space Force to something else. Like change the mission slightly and call it the Space Core or something.

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