In Trump's 'murder the messenger' White House 'it’s survival of the morally sickest': conservative

In his column for the Daily Beast, conservative -- and former Republican -- Matt Lewis explained that Donald Trump's decision to turn on Dr. Anthony Fauci is yet another example of his habit of destroying advisers who don't tell him what he wants to hear which is why and, in this case, more Americans are going to die in the coronavirus pandemic.

As Lewis notes, Fauci, who has been brutally frank about the resurgent COVID-19 health crisis that is now swamping Arizona, Texas and Florida, joins a long line of high profile administration officials who have found themselves on the president's hit list for not toeing the administration's line.

In that fashion, Lewis suggests, the president has become Stalin-esque.

"There’s a scene in the film The Death of Stalin, where Stalin suffers a cerebral hemorrhage, and Nikita Khrushchev suggests calling a doctor, but Lazar Kaganovich observes a Catch-22: 'The best doctors are in the gulag or dead, so any doctor still in Moscow is not a good doctor," " he wrote equating Fauci with those doctors.

 The columnist asserted that Fauci will likely be discredited with false allegations from Trump's people -- once again ruining an honorable person and keeping the White House free of anyone who is not a sycophant or a presidential "yes-man."

"Eventually, there will be no good people left who are willing to advise Trump—and fewer still who will have the guts to save him from himself," he wrote. "Trump also has created a culture that figuratively murders the messenger and rewards the executioner. The result is adverse selection—a situation where the decent and competent are purged, while the corrupt and incompetent are promoted and rewarded."

Noting that Dr. Fauci is everything Trump is not -- "honest and competent" -- the columnist said the president's elimination of competing voices is what is leading to his likely ouster in November.

"It goes without saying that this trend is bad for America, but I can’t help thinking that it might be one harbinger of Trump’s downfall," Lewis wrote. " Having purged the adults—the Mattises, Boltons, McMasters, et al.—he is left with incompetent 'yes' men who only reinforce Trump’s worst instincts, while shielding him from those who would speak truth to power."

"Dr. Fauci appears to be Trump’s latest sacrificial lamb. But again, this latest incident is merely a microcosm. The macro problem is that Trump has created a regime where the worst get on top, and the best get the boot," he added before concluding, "Trump punishes the real heroes and rewards the villains. Instead of survival of the fittest, it’s survival of the (morally) sickest."

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