US Wars Hampering Medical Aid for Americans amid Pandemic: Ex-Senate Candidate

“The slow response to COVID-19 reflects a long-term case of misplaced priorities and managerial incompetence by the incompetence government of the United States,” Mark Dankof, who is also a broadcaster and pastor in San Antonio, Texas, told Tasnim in an interview.

He added, “A government that spends trillions for Zionist surrogate wars for the bogus “War on Terror” is a government that by definition will prove an utter failure in providing medical care and infrastructure support domestically. The COVID-19 crisis now brings this truism into clear focus for the American public in a way that is absolutely relevant to them now in a fight for personal and economic survival”.

Mark Dankof is a broadcaster for The Ugly Truth Podcast. Born in Wiesbaden, Germany, the son of a United States Air Force Colonel, he graduated from Valparaiso University in 1977 and from Chicago's Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 1983. In recent years, he has pursued post-graduate work in systematic theology and theological German at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Formerly the 36th District Chairman of the Republican Party in King County/Seattle and later an elected delegate to Texas State Republican Conventions in 1994 and 1996, he entered the United States Senate race in Delaware in 2000 as the nominated candidate of the Constitution Party against Democratic candidate Thomas Carper and Republican incumbent William Roth.

Following is the full text of the interview.

Tasnim: There are reports that US hospitals are facing the kind of life-and-death decisions that industrialized countries typically encounter only in times of war and natural disasters. Frightening shortages have been reported across the country amid the outbreak of COVID-19. As of today, there are over 336,000 confirmed cases nationwide, with over 9,600 deaths. What is behind this slow response to the novel coronavirus?

Dankof: The slow response to COVID-19 reflects a long-term case of misplaced priorities and managerial incompetence by the government of the United States. William S. Smith has a brand new article for Pat Buchanan’s The American Conservative that underscores what I’ve been saying for both Iranian media and American Alt-Right outlets since 9-11. A government that spends trillions for Zionist surrogate wars for the bogus “War on Terror” is a government that by definition will prove an utter failure in providing medical care and infrastructure support domestically. The COVID-19 crisis now brings this truism into a clear focus for the American public in a way that is absolutely relevant to them now in a fight for personal and economic survival.

Smith puts it in a nutshell by observing that “The United States will spend $1.5 trillion on the F-35 fighter plane while our health care workers do not have enough masks. We spent billions to build the health care infrastructure of Iraq and Afghanistan, but US hospitals may not have enough ventilators for critically ill Americans. As a viral tsunami crashes over us, many leaders are still stuck in the past, with the secretary of state using his time to plot against Iran. In light of our scramble to find the resources to fight the pandemic, does anyone still think it was a good idea to spend more than $6 trillion on a “global war on terror?” Do you feel safer?

Tasnim: In the past days, a number of US doctors and nurses have died due to a lack of medical equipment. The next coronavirus crisis is said to be a shortage of doctors and nurses. Why do you think the US health care system cannot protect its doctors and nurses?

Dankof: Misplaced priorities are a part of this, as I have already said. I also believe that the deliberate outsourcing of critically important manufacturing capabilities abroad has revealed the utter failure of globalist, corporatist economic policies that actually threaten the national security of the United States for real. The classic example of this is the outsourcing of the American pharmaceutical industry to China. Kelly Vlahos has an important article out for The American Conservative entitled “‘Swamp Creatures’ Attack Effort to Make Medicines American Again.” Here, she references the critical shortages in masks, ventilators, and medicines due to these globalist policies, and then underscores how bought-and-paid-for the government of the United States is in terms of being purchased by the pharmaceutical industry in the same fashion employed by the Israeli Lobby here. A look at the Federal Election Commission web site will tell anyone at a glance how much Big Pharma money is deployed in any particular election, both in cash figures and in the percentage vis-a-vis other industries also buying influence and votes.

In the case of Big Pharma, Vlahos tells us that “On the one hand we should thank AAM and the lobbying goliath PhRMA, which represents the world’s major pharmaceutical companies (think Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson) for stripping away the veneer of special interests in this time of crisis. The pharma/health products industry continues to spend more on Capitol Hill influence operations—a record-breaking $228 million in 2019 alone—than anyone else. There is a lot of stake here, and we’ll be damned, literally, if they lose market share or profits. We know where they stand now.” She certainly summarizes the problem better than I can at a moment’s glance.

Tasnim:  The number of coronavirus cases in the West is skyrocketing and in fact, Western states have failed to respond properly to the crisis. Why do you think the West thinks it knows best and doesn't have anything to learn from the rest of the world?

Dankof: I’ll quote actress Judi Dench in the James Bond picture Casino Royale as my answer: “Arrogance and self-awareness seldom go hand-in-hand.”

At the same time, the COVID-19 crisis is hopefully spurring on the American and Western publics to a new level of informed hostility to their governments and MSM owned by Zionism, Central Banks, Big Pharma, Wall Street, and the Military-Industrial Complex. This sort of sad situation paradoxically presents an opportunity for massive protest and revolt against the people and the special interests who have brought the United States and the West to this pathetic point. I said as much for John Stadtmiller on his National Intel Report program on April 3rd for the Republic Broadcasting Network (RBN).

This has also empowered me to hopefully also help the Iranian people against these forces through op-ed pieces like my recent effort re-posted by Charles Bausman of Russia Insider titled, “COVID-19 Sanctions on Iran Expose the Evil of the Zionist US Empire.” That essay has made its way to all of the major household names in American government and media, as well as to key figures at the UN and NATO, along with all of the American and European activists I know from Left to Right who have been demanding the end of this transparently insane War on Terror since 9-11.

This COVID-19 crisis has also resulted in the biggest evolving expansion of the American Police and Surveillance State since 2011. I and others are working feverishly around the clock against this additional menace. For more information on how bad this situation is becoming, I recommend the writings of John W. Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute for Tasnim readers. Mr. Whitehead is a Constitutional Attorney here in America who has been out in front of this for a very long time. I consult him on a daily basis through his web page.