[Trump’s COVID-19 Diagnosis]
Alex Shephard: “Trump’s diagnosis is the culmination of six months of recklessness and failure…Above all, his actions over the past six months reflect his extraordinary selfishness and cruelty.’
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Contrary to the notion that the coronavirus “snuck up” on President Donald Trump just as it did far less powerful people across the U.S. and around the world, Trump’s announcement Friday that he tested positive for Covid-19 was—according to progressive critics—a direct and foreseeable consequence of the president’s months of lying, callous disregard for public health, and catastrophic mishandling of the federal government’s pandemic response.
In a tweet Friday morning, author and environmentalist Naomi Klein drew a striking analogy in an effort to place Trump’s diagnosis in the broader context of his administration’s failure to take the steps necessary to combat the pandemic—a failure that has resulted in more than 200,000 dead Americans and counting.
“Trump getting Covid is the epidemiological equivalent of a mass shooting where the shooter opens fire on a crowd and then turns the gun on himself,” Klein wrote. “Not a tragic accident—a crime scene.”
Klein repeated her argument in an interview on Democracy Now! and warned that the U.S. public must be “prepared for the president using the fact that he’s having to cancel campaign events for two weeks to try to further delegitimize elections.”
Since the coronavirus first began spreading at a rapid pace throughout the U.S. in March—forcing entire swaths of the economy to shut down and throwing countless lives into chaos—Trump and members of his administration publicly minimized the threat posed by Covid-19 and dispensed with the safety recommendations of experts, refusing to take simple life-saving steps like wearing face coverings and avoiding large gatherings.
Instead, the president did the opposite, knowingly spreading misinformation about the pandemic to the public, questioning the effectiveness of masks, and holding large indoor campaign rallies that threatened the health of the thousands in attendance as well as those they later came in contact with.
“Trump’s diagnosis is the culmination of six months of recklessness and failure, the ultimate, inevitable end of his administration’s disastrous response to a global pandemic,” The New Republic’s Alex Shephard wrote Friday. “Above all, his actions over the past six months reflect his extraordinary selfishness and cruelty. Other people get the virus. People in blue states get it. People of color get it. The elderly get it. Donald J. Trump doesn’t get it—he can go about his life, however he pleases, ignoring the devastation around him.”
“Trump has spent his entire life avoiding the consequences of his actions, from his business failures to his toxic politics. That changed on Thursday evening,” Shephard continued. “No one would wish Covid-19 on anyone, not even Trump, but the president has spent the last six months desperately attempting to change the subject. Now, with less than a month before the election, he’s paying the price.”
Read rest of story at https://www.commondreams.org
