Trump continues his campaign in Pennsylvania 2:18
(CNN) -
"Totally Under Control" is, in a way, a collection of great successes of the Trump administration's failures and missteps related to covid-19, but with an extraordinarily timely blow due to the president's own diagnosis. .
Director Alex Gibney and his collaborators also earned difficulty points for assembling this documentary during the pandemic, designing a remotely operated "Covid-cam" to safely record interviews.
Those interviews tap into a series of cautionary voices who weigh in on how political considerations lead to an ineffective response, juxtaposing the United States with South Korea.
What "Totally Under Control" includes
Among those speaking is Rick Bright, former director of the Advanced Biomedical Research and Development Authority (BARDA), who recently resigned from his job at the National Institutes of Health and cries as he discussed the challenges of saying the truth to those currently in power.
Another opinion comes from Max Kennedy Jr., a former volunteer for the White House covid-19 supply chain task force, who became a whistleblower after working with Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner.
Kennedy (Robert Kennedy's grandson) thought he would only be helping seasoned professionals and was surprised to find that he and other twenty-somethings were being asked to play a key role in finding medical supplies.
Gibney and her fellow directors Suzanne Hillinger and Ophelia Harutyunyan condense 10 months of news into two hours, and Gibney (who also narrated) noted that Dr. Deborah Birx was chosen for her high-profile role by a White House “interested in packaging science. serving partisan purposes. '
No response from management
The filmmakers say they received no responses in their efforts to include comments from the Trump administration, including requests to speak with President Trump or Vice President Pence, who led the White House coronavirus task force.
"Totally Under Control" derives its title, appropriately, from one of President Trump's early pronouncements on the coronavirus, who insisted that he contained the threat before sweeping through American society.
It was just one of the times when his claims contradicted reality, like his statement in March that "Anyone who wants a test can get a test."
One of the most troubling interludes involves Dr. Nancy Messonnier, who, as director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, gave a frank assessment on February 25 of the harsh scenario facing the United States, saying that “ It was not so much a question of whether this will happen again ”, but rather a question of“ when exactly the country will face a serious outbreak ”.
Bright called those public comments "a turning point" after the upbeat conversation coming from the administration, and Messonnier's comments sparked a furious response within the administration over concerns about scaring the stock market.
Other interviewees for the documentary include New York Times reporter Michael Shear, who is among those who recently contracted the virus through the White House-related outbreak.
Agents of Chaos
Gibney's dizzying level of documentary work includes "Agents of Chaos," a deep dive into the Trump-Russia nexus for HBO.
Like that project, "Totally Under Control" serves as an indictment of the president that unfolds with the urgency of a thriller.
It's no accident, obviously, that the latest film ended in time for its pre-election release, a dizzying effort relative to the usual demands of the genre.
In total, there is not much new here.
Still, for anyone who hasn't read Bob Woodward's book "Rage," or the deeply reported accounts by The New York Times and others exposing the shortcomings of the Trump administration, Gibney and company have delivered what they clearly purport to be. a powerful final argument, putting the case together.
And to underscore the ironic nature of the title, the evidence suggests that it is a response characterized more by chaos than control.
"Totally Under Control" is available on demand starting October 13 and then premieres October 20 on Hulu.