Gene Nygaard

Crosby

The White House announced that the federal government is to continue paying the full cost of National Guard aid in fighting the coronavirus in two states: Florida and Texas.

When asked why just those two states, the White House reply was that they were the only ones whose governors had personally appealed to the president for an exception. No objective criteria, nothing about special circumstances in the needs of those two states. Not even anything about what those governors said in their personal appeals to the president.

Apparently, the rules are quite simple and easy to infer, for the federal government to continue paying the full cost of National Guard aid in fighting the coronavirus.

1. The governor must personally grovel in front of the president and beg for assistance, in an off-the-record phone call or personal audience.

2. The governor must publicly thank the administration for their wonderful job in dealing with the coronavirus.

3. The governor must promise not to criticize the president or his administration’s handling of the coronavirus crisis in the future.

Or, in common parlance, the governors of Texas and Florida were the only ones so far willing to publicly kiss Donald Trump’s ass. So they get millions of dollars. The other states get millions of dollars in bills held over their heads.

That is a crime called “bribery.” Note that Donald Trump still doesn’t pay the bribes himself – it is the U.S. taxpayers who are called on to provide the money for this, his latest round of election-driven bribery.