Given the Impeached Insult Comedian’s aversion to the truth, it’s remarkable that Dr. Anthony Fauci still has his job. Fauci is a blunt truth-teller whereas Trump is a verbose liar. In the immortal words of Johnny Mercer, “something’s gotta give, something’s gotta give, something’s gotta give.”

The divide between Trump and the eminent physician has been there all along but the cracks widened noticeably last weekend. Fauci conceded that the federal response should have come earlier. That led President* Pennywise to retweet some noxious nonsense about the good doctor. We’ve gone from government by tweet to government by retweet. Oy, just oy.

When I was a young political junkie, the media landscape was populated with Kremlinologists who spent their time interpreting signals coming from the Soviet Union’s gerontological leadership. In 2020, we have Trumpologists who spend their time parsing Trump’s tweets and predicting his next tantrum.

Trump is more predictable than Brezhnev and company. He’s likely to fire Fauci in a fit of pique, then regret it immediately since the doctor is among those he’s setting up to be a patsy for the decreasing number of dolts still buying his bullshit. Like a demonic child pulling the wings off a fly, he’s likely to torment and insult Fauci before firing him.

That brings us to the Fauci conundrum. Should he stay or should he go? I think he should stay. Thus far, he’s been able to prevent Trump from making an even bigger mess of things. The Kaiser of Chaos is contemplating a premature reopening of the economy, which could lead to another huge wave of the virus. Someone inside the administration needs to tell him no. Who else will do so? Mikes Pence or Pompeo? Peter Navarro?

Besides, Tony Fauci has been in this spot before with Ronald Reagan and AIDS. So much for everything in the Trump era being unprecedented. Fauci was among those pushing Reagan to acknowledge that plague. It took Rock Hudson’s death from AIDS to get Reagan to admit that it wasn’t just a gay disease. But he did so grudgingly and mostly because of pressure from his wife and children. Unfortunately, Melania is no Nancy and Don Jr. is no Ron Jr. Holy grotesque understatement, Batman.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

The last word goes to Frank Sinatra: