Trump Supporters Are Directly Responsible For The Enormous Coronavirus Death Toll
America now leads the world in Coronavirus deaths, and all thanks to Trump and the supporters who voted for him.
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by Ben Cohen
It’s official, the United States now has the highest death toll from Coronavirus of any country on earth. That includes China, were the virus originated from, and Italy, the previously hardest hit nation that failed spectacularly to control the outbreak. As per NBC News:
The United States now has the lead with the most deaths from the coronavirus outbreak of any nation worldwide with nearly 22,000 lives lost.
Meanwhile in Italy, previously the worst-hit country, officials on Monday were considering loosening lockdown measures after the lowest number of deaths in a single day since March 19.
This happened because Donald Trump did not listen to the urgent pleas of government scientists and disease experts and get a head start on the outbreak that was wreaking havoc on Asia and Europe. This also happened because enough Americans voted for a madman in 2016, apparently believing a reality TV show host and fake billionaire could actually run the country. He can’t, and now Americans are paying the ultimate price.
From bad to terrifyingly horrible
On Sunday, the New York Times broke a truly devastating story on Trump’s astonishing stonewalling of the experts pleading with him to take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously. The timeline laid out by the Times reporters is beyond damning — it is incriminating:
The National Security Council office responsible for tracking pandemics received intelligence reports in early January predicting the spread of the virus to the United States, and within weeks was raising options like keeping Americans home from work and shutting down cities the size of Chicago. Mr. Trump would avoid such steps until March.
Despite Mr. Trump’s denial weeks later, he was told at the time about a Jan. 29 memo produced by his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, laying out in striking detail the potential risks of a coronavirus pandemic: as many as half a million deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses.
The health and human services secretary, Alex M. Azar II, directly warned Mr. Trump of the possibility of a pandemic during a call on Jan. 30, the second warning he delivered to the president about the virus in two weeks. The president, who was on Air Force One while traveling for appearances in the Midwest, responded that Mr. Azar was being alarmist.
Mr. Azar publicly announced in February that the government was establishing a “surveillance” system in five American cities to measure the spread of the virus and enable experts to project the next hot spots. It was delayed for weeks. The slow start of that plan, on top of the well-documented failures to develop the nation’s testing capacity, left administration officials with almost no insight into how rapidly the virus was spreading. “We were flying the plane with no instruments,” one official said.
By the third week in February, the administration’s top public health experts concluded they should recommend to Mr. Trump a new approach that would include warning the American people of the risks and urging steps like social distancing and staying home from work. But the White House focused instead on messaging and crucial additional weeks went by before their views were reluctantly accepted by the president — time when the virus spread largely unimpeded.
These crucial weeks that went by are being paid for by Americans choking to death on ventilators all around the country. Trump had an opportunity to make America an example of how to deal effectively with an epidemic. Instead, he has turned the most powerful country on earth into a global laughing stock.
America the joke
Other countries are watching in sheer disbelief at the calamity in America, amazed by the incompetence, carelessness, and extraordinary indifference to human suffering. They have also been taken aback by Trump’s refusal to cooperate with the international community and his menacing attempts to flex American muscle in the battle to get medical supplies to those who need it.
Recently, the Trump Whitehouse hijacked a shipment of 200,000 protective masks that were en route to Germany, handing out cash to suppliers in Thailand who then redirected them to the US. German politicians have labeled this brazen display of sociopathy an “act of modern piracy”. But it doesn’t stop there. Reported the Guardian this past weekend:
Europeans were already outraged by Trump’s reported efforts to acquire monopoly rights to a coronavirus vaccine under development in Germany. This latest example of nationalistic self-interest compounded anger across the EU over Trump’s travel ban, imposed last month without consultation or scientific justification.
US reputational damage is not confined to Europe. There was dismay among the G7 countries that a joint statement on tackling the pandemic could not be agreed because Trump insisted on calling it the “Wuhan virus” – his crude way of pinning sole blame on China.
International action has also been hampered at the UN security council by US objections over terminology.
Trump has ignored impassioned calls to create a Covid-19 global taskforce or coalition. He appears oblivious to the catastrophe bearing down on millions of people in the developing world.
“Trump’s battle against multilateralism has made it so that even formats like the G7 are no longer working,” commented Christoph Schult in Der Spiegel. “It appears the coronavirus is destroying the last vestiges of a world order.”
Trump’s surreal televised Covid-19 briefings are further undermining respect for US leadership. Trump regularly propagates false or misleading information, bets on hunches, argues with reporters and contradicts scientific and medical experts.
Trump is not only killing Americans, he is paving the way for more deaths around the world as he attempts to wreck cooperative efforts to stop this pandemic, and newer, potentially more deadly ones in the future. He has, and is, screwing this up in every conceivable way possible.
While Trump is responsible for his actions (or lack thereof) in office, those who voted for him in 2016 are ultimately to blame for this unfolding bloodbath.
The liberals warned us
The Coronavirus pandemic is the nightmare scenario liberals and sane conservatives warned about in 2016 as they begged Americans to vote for Hillary Clinton.
The anti-Trump movement that emerged in the wake of his candidacy did not suffer from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” as Fox News and other feckless Republicans claimed it did. The movement correctly understood that electing a narcissistic sociopath with the attention span of a goldfish to the most powerful office in the land was a recipe for disaster. No one knew when this disaster would unfold, but they knew that at some point it had to.
Trump critics knew that Trump was not capable of grasping complicated geo political issues that required an in depth knowledge of history and international relations. They knew he was not capable of listening to the advice of experts, or understanding what they might tell him. They knew he was not capable of rising above petty grievances or gotcha politics, so would not be able to lead in a time of genuine crisis. They knew he would be incapable of telling the truth when it mattered, and knew he would never take responsibility for his own mistakes.
Trump supporters must be made to own this
It would be impossible to put a deeply immoral conman like Trump in office, who surrounded himself with sycophants, grifters, and petty thugs, and not have the country implode. It was always a matter of when, not if. Those who knew Trump and what he stood for did not fear the worst — they predicted it, and have spent the past three years hoping it the damage would be only enough to undo his presidency. But it is a damn sight worse than that now, and Americans have to wait until November to stop Trump from creating more death and destruction.
Those who voted for Trump in 2016 should be forced to reckon with the consequences of their actions. They have paved the way for a historic disaster of almost unparalleled proportions. More Americans now stand to die from Coronavirus than in World War I, Korea and Vietnam. It is a tragedy that they now own, and they can never be allowed to forget it.
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Great writing, Ben! Please follow up by writing about how Trump's approval remains near 100% among Republicans. And how Fox News spins the reality to feed the MAGAs their diet of blame, name calling and xenophobia that keeps them loyal to their chosen leader. No matter what the outcome, Trump must always appear to be right.