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Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is making news for not making news.
The physician, 2004 presidential candidate and political commentator tweeted his nearly 155,000 social media followers this month to report he’ll no longer appear on MSNBC if the cable news channel keeps airing President Donald Trump’s freewheeling coronavirus press conferences that have gone so far as to suggest the medically scorned idea of injecting disinfectants to combat Covid-19.
“I won’t make much difference if it’s just me,” Dean told fellow politicos, “but if 50 of you did it it would.”
MSNBC has yet to change or comment, but other media outlets ranging from Washington, D.C.’s The Hill to the Hollywood Reporter have turned the tweet into headlines on a doctor-turned-politician’s take on the pandemic.
“Trump says outrageous things, the reality television crowd pays attention to them, and it’s a major problem for governing the country, because he harms people by giving them misinformation,” Dean told the latter publication. “People have died because of some of the things that Trump has said on television about hydroxychloroquine and stuff like that.”
Dean said that before Trump floated the universally rebuked suggestion of fighting coronavirus by injecting a patient with household disinfectants or ultraviolet light.
“If there is any doubt left that the president is seriously mentally impaired,” Dean went on to tweet, “this story should make it clear that he is indeed, a crackpot.”
Dean, sheltering at his Burlington home, has kinder words for Gov. Phil Scott.
“I think he’s doing a terrific job,” Dean says. “He’s measured, he listens to his advisers, he’s doing the right thing with a very careful attempt to get back to normal. I think Vermonters have a much shrewder view of who their leadership is and what they’re doing. They are willing to follow Phil’s lead as long as he tells the truth, and he’s telling the truth.”
Dean also commends Vermont Health Commissioner Mark Levine, with whom he trained as a doctor.
“He’s very, very smart,” Dean says of Levine.
Dean earned his medical degree in New York City in 1978 before moving to Vermont, where he was elected a state representative in 1982 and lieutenant governor in 1986 and sworn in as governor upon the death of Gov. Richard Snelling in 1991.
Serving until 2003, Dean went on to run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004, then became national party chairman from 2005 to 2011 and, most recently, an MSNBC commentator until the channel began airing Trump’s daily press conferences live and unedited.
“I understand very well why they’re running them — they like ratings,” he says. “But enough is enough.”
For the physician, the biggest challenge of coronavirus is the medical community’s lack of understanding of it.
“That is one of the reasons I object to cable stations putting Trump on,” he says. “He knows nothing and he doesn’t mind saying whatever comes into his head — nor does he care what experts are saying.”
As governor, Dean faced the fallout of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, although he says that didn’t compare with the current situation.
“There’s nothing more adrenaline pushing than being in the middle of a major crisis,” he says. “But the big thing about managing one is don’t talk about what you don’t know and always tell the truth.”
Although not on MSNBC, Dean is busy as an adviser for a Washington, D.C., law firm, a fellow at his alma mater of Yale University and head of a new Democratic Party data-sharing project.
“I’m online all the time,” he says before adding he’s walking six to eight miles a day.
Dean also continues to talk politics. Take the topic of fellow Vermont presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
“I thought his endorsement of Joe Biden was heartfelt, meaningful and is going to make it much easier to unify the party,” Dean says. “And I do think he has moved the Democratic Party to think more seriously about the issues he has talked about all his life.”
But the Dean household is focused most on coronavirus. His wife, primary care physician Judith Steinberg, is continuing to work at her Shelburne office, although mostly through telemedicine. Dean himself is helping out by staying at home.
“Obviously you want to get people back to work as fast as you can, but not at the price of what’s going to happen, which is the second wave,” he says. “What most people don’t understand is we’re not going to get less infections by flattening the curve, we’re simply going to spread out the number to let the health care system work to get less mortality. That’s the balance that has to be struck.”
