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No greater love hath Trump than to lay down your
life for his re-election
Richard
Wolffe
Only a once-in-a-century leader has the guts to say
out loud what the worst among us are really thinking: everyone other than me is
expendable
@richardwolffedc
Wed 25 Mar
2020 23.13 GMTLast modified on Thu 26 Mar 2020 05.18 GMT
‘If only we could target the virus to those
who get in the way of our economy and, more importantly, Donald Trump’s
re-election.’
Donald
Trump isn’t much of a doctor or scientist. He isn’t much of a diplomat or
general. His leadership skills match his business skills. There’s a reason his
companies went bankrupt so many times.
But he
might just be a pioneer with this idea of letting people die for the sake of
the country. Only a once-in-a-century leader has the guts to say out loud what
the worst among us are really thinking: everyone other than me is expendable.
Anyone
older is past it, for sure. The younger ones we can easily afford to lose: they
don’t actually pay for anything. The smarter ones? Totally annoying. The dumber
ones: what’s even the point?
The sick
are a real drain on us, financially and emotionally. The poor won’t really do
much in the long run, no matter how hard we try. The wealthy just keep shoving
it in your face. Foreigners aren’t like us at all. And our neighbors are
frankly a bit too close for comfort.
So when you
add it all up, it’s only sensible that we ask everyone else to sacrifice
themselves for us. For the sake of the nation and all that’s good, please just
go, so that the rest of us – not counting the undesirables – can get back to
our old lives.
“Look,
you’re going to lose a number of people to the flu,” this pandemic of a
president told Fox News on Tuesday. “But you’re going to lose more people by
putting a country into a massive recession or depression. You’re going to lose
people. You’re going to have suicides by the thousands. You’re going to have
all sorts of things happen. You’re going to have instability.”
Mr
President, it might come as a shock to you but we are currently suffering from
a viral case of instability, and you are one of its hotspots. As you surely
recall, if you lift all restrictions, the estimated death count is 2.2 million
Americans.
“You can’t just come in and say, ‘Let’s close
up the United States of America,’” continued the president who prides himself
on closing the borders of, um, the United States of America.
Being a
fundamentally religious man, albeit one with a love of paying off porn stars,
Trump has a full resurrection in mind for the country in all of two weeks. “I
would love to have it open by Easter,” he told the normally diligent
hoax-busters at Fox News. “I will, I will tell you that right now. I would love
to have that. It’s such an important day for other reasons, but I’ll make it an
important day for this too.”
Pray tell:
what are those other reasons that Easter is important? Perhaps if we could
discuss those reasons, you might rethink this one. It seems – how to put this
diplomatically? – a little perverse to kill large swaths of the population to
celebrate Jesus Christ rising from the dead. The White House comms team might
think it’s confusing to mix one message of rebirth with another about mass
death.
Of course,
this kind of party-pooping epidemiology is so typical of the elites. They just
don’t get it. Or worse: they’re trying to save lives just so they can hurt
Donald Trump’s re-election.
“The
LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country
closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my
election success,” tweeted our LameStream President on Wednesday. “The real
people want to get back to work ASAP. We will be stronger than ever before!”
If it’s not the media’s fault, it’s the
doctors and scientists, or the governors or the Chinese. Someone, anyone, not
called Trump
The real
people won’t be surprised to hear that our fearful leader’s latest gambit is to
blame everyone else as he desperately tries to squirm his way to November’s
election. How else can he divert attention from his disastrously botched
handling of the pandemic and the ensuing economic collapse? If it’s not the
media’s fault, it’s the doctors and scientists, or the governors or the
Chinese. Someone, anyone, not called Trump.
There is
some history to this one, naturally. When Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto
Rico in our antihero’s first year in office, he thought it was fine and dandy
to let the sick and elderly die. In the early days, the official death toll was
so low it was actually worth celebrating their deaths on his one and only trip
to the American colony after the storm.
“If you
look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what
happened here with, really, a storm that was just totally overpowering,” he
said, “nobody has ever seen anything like this. What is your death count, as of
this moment? Seventeen? Sixteen certified. Sixteen people versus in the
thousands. You can be very proud of all of your people, all of our people
working together.”
Of course,
they weren’t working together because they had no commander-in-chief. At the
time Trump was talking, the death toll was growing exponentially because our
so-called president failed to surge supplies to the island. So the sick and the
elderly died in their thousands because there was no reliable power, clean
water or food, in hospitals and senior centers.
Anyone who
complained, like the mayor of San Juan, was corrupt or crazy or incompetent: a
combination of qualities that Trump should actually trademark. And when the
real death toll finally emerged – at more than 4,600 Americans – it was
naturally all a plot by Democrats to make him look bad.
Those old
and sick Americans in Puerto Rico were no different from the old and sick
Americans whose lives are so cheap for Trump and the Texas lieutenant governor
and the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.
If only we
could target the virus to those who get in the way of our economy and, more
importantly, Donald Trump’s re-election. It would be so much easier than
sourcing more ventilators, or respirator masks, or reviving an economy that is
heading for depression.
That would
require leadership, or at least crisis management skills: rallying a government
and nation to a common cause to save each other and ourselves. All the rest is
the wishful thinking of a group of people whose malign influence is now a
matter of fact.
The
coronavirus has no sense of morality: it just spreads its selfish genes, along
with its misery and chaos, as fast as it can. At long last, this president has
finally met his soulmate.
|
Trump
accuses media of wanting to keep economy shut to hurt his reelection
Despite
warning from health experts, president denies Easter timeline is based on his
political interests and attacks the press
David Smith
in Washington
@smithinamerica
Thu 26 Mar
2020 01.56 GMTLast modified on Thu 26 Mar 2020 02.18 GMT
Donald
Trump has accused the media of wanting to keep the US economy shuttered during
the coronavirus pandemic to undermine his chances of reelection.
The US
president has been pushing to reopen swaths of the country by Easter – 12 April
– despite warnings from medical experts that measures such as closing
businesses and social distancing need more time to work.
“The
LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country
closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my
election success,” he tweeted on Wednesday. “The real people want to get back
to work ASAP. ”
At
Wednesday’s White House coronavirus task force briefing, Trump followed up with
an aggressive denial that the Easter timeline is based on his political interests.
“The media would like to see me do poorly in the election,” he said.
Challenged
by a reporter, Trump, who has long used the press as a punching bag, said with
exasperation: “Just so you understand – are you ready? – I think there are
certain people that would like it not to open so quickly. I think there are
certain people that would like it to do financially poorly because they think
that would be very good as far as defeating me at the polls.”
The
president added: “I don’t know if that’s so, but I do think it’s so that there
are people in your profession that would like that to happen. I think it’s very
clear that there are people in your profession that write fake news.”
Gesturing
around the briefing room with his hands, he said: “You do. She does. There are
people in your profession that write fake news. They would love to see me – for
whatever reason, because we’ve done one hell of a job, nobody’s done the job
that we’ve done – and it’s lucky that you have this group here right now for
this problem because you wouldn’t even have a country left.”
Trump has
long tied his political fortunes to the economy in general and stock market in
particular, but the coronavirus outbreak has wiped out the stock gains of his
presidency. On Wednesday he reiterated his call for restarting the economy at
Easter, even though US infections have now topped 60,000 and scientists have
warned of disastrous consequences for public health.
“It’s time,” he said. “People want to get back
to work. I want to get our country back.”
But he
sought to provide reassurance that he would heed the advice of public health
officials. “I’m not going to do anything rash or hastily, I don’t do that.”
People who
return to work could still take precautions, Trump claimed. “They’re not going
to walk around hugging and kissing each other in the office when they come
back. Even though they may feel like it.”
The
deadline goal drew criticism from Democratic front runner Joe Biden, the
president’s likely opponent in the November election. “Now he’s suggesting he
wants to get the country opened – back open by Easter,” Biden told reporters at
a virtual press conference. “Look, we all want to get back to normal as quickly
as possible, but we have a lot to do to make that possible. We have to do it in
a smart way – not on some arbitrary or symbolic timeline.”
The former
vice president, speaking via video link from his basement, added: “It would be
a catastrophic thing to do for our people and for our economy if we sent people
back to work just as we were beginning to see the impact of social distancing
take hold only to unleash a second spike in infections.”
Biden’s
Democratic primary with Senator Bernie Sanders has been paralysed by the
crisis, denying both men political oxygen, and the long term political
implications remain unpredictable. Opinion polls suggest a majority of
Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the crisis, despite his early
downplaying of the threat.
At
Wednesday’s briefing, Trump also urged Congress to pass a historic $2tn
stimulus bill negotiated by his administration and Republican and Democratic
leaders in the Senate. “I will sign it immediately,” he said, adding that it
would mark a “great day for the American worker and American families”.
The bill,
delayed by bitter partisan battles, includes funding to send $1,200 cheques to
many Americans, $500bn to help distressed companies, including $25bn for
airlines, and $367bn in loans to sustain small businesses.
Steven
Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, thanked Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell
minority leader Chuck Schumer for their efforts. “We couldn’t be more pleased with
the unprecedented response from the Senate to protect American workers and
American businesses,” he told reporters.
“Our
expectation is this bill passes tonight and gets to the House tomorrow. And
they pass it. We need to get this money into the American economy and American
workers.”
Meanwhile
Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases, warned that the coronavirus could be seasonal and cyclical. “I know
we’ll be successful in putting this down now,” he said. “But we really need to
be prepared for another cycle.”
Trump also
offered some bizarre digressions, boasting about his efforts to make Nato
allies pay more, touting his “big, beautiful wall” and defending the package’s
$25m funding for the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in
Washington.
“This was a
request from the Democrats because of the fact that they have a facility that’s
essentially closed up,” he said. “If I wanted to go there tonight to look at
Romeo and Juliet, I’d love to go see Romero and Juliet...”
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