U.S. cases of COVID-19 have surged past 21,000 this Saturday. Instead of focusing on the desperate shortage of personal protective equipment at hospitals—which is being movingly brought to life on social media through the #GetMePPE campaign—Trump is still more focused on promoting a magic cure for the coronavirus.
He’s doing this even after Dr. Tony Fauci cautioned yesterday that the supposed efficacy of the treatment Trump is talking about is “anecdotal” and has yet to be properly tested. Even after other doctors have warned that the drug combo Trump is hyping may cause heart arrhythmias and sudden death.
Trump is like an astrologer whose job is to make fanciful predictions every day, hoping desperately that one of these predictions eventually comes true. If and when it does, Sean Hannity will no doubt call him “Nostradamus” and American Evangelicals will officially replace the New Testament with “The Art of the Deal.”
Meanwhile, in the midst of the worst public health crisis in 100 years, the rest of us have to face the reality of Trump. He thinks “leadership” means simply giving hope, even as he refuses to take responsibility. Day after day, he is simply incapable of speaking honestly about the reality of what we’re living through. And that only makes the reality we’re living through even more scary.
Rachel Maddow made similar points on her show last night.
In Maddow’s own words:
The President loves saying things like ‘There’s a drug we’ve got! It’s very effective! It’s approved already! Everybody’s going to get it!’ He loves saying things like that because that would be a lovely thing to be able to tell people. Unless, of course, that’s not true, in which case telling people a fairy tale like that is cruel. And harmful. And needlessly diverting. And wildly irresponsible from anyone in any leadership role. It’s actually wildly irresponsible if anybody said that to you from a barstool… but to get that from somebody at the Presidential podium? Nevertheless, he keeps doing it.
She went on to point out several examples of Trump’s fairy tale promises. His hope that something magical will happen to bring an end to our “invisible enemy.” It is, of course, an enemy Trump failed to stop using the usual tools a President might use, like science and expertise and testing. It’s an enemy, we now know, that Trump failed to stop even after intelligence officials warned him repeatedly in January and February about the coming pandemic.
Among the past claims made by Trump that Maddow cited:
- The virus is well contained.
- It is well under control.
- The risk to Americans is very low.
- It would disappear “like a miracle.”
- 1.4 million tests would be available this week.
- A Google website to help everyone find a testing site would be very quickly done “unlike websites of the past.” (The site is still in development and being tested in one part of California and not working properly.)
- Two Navy hospital ships would be in NY and the West Coast in a week or so. (Both ships are currently undergoing maintenance. Neither has a medical crew on board.)
- The government has a massive supply of ventilators, face masks and protective equipment for healthcare workers.
- The government has ordered 500 million respirator masks. (The order will take 18 months to fill.)
According to Maddow, it’s time to recognize that:
When he is talking about the coronavirus epidemic, more often than not he is lying. Even when he is talking about what he has done or will do, he is consistently lying and is giving you happy talk that is stuff that the federal government isn’t actually doing. And it’s making people around the country count on the fact that the federal government is doing that stuff when they are not.
Maddow went on to call on the media to stop covering Trump’s daily press briefings live to prevent the spread of misinformation coming from the Presidential podium because, “honestly, it’s going to cost lives.”
Astonishingly, a new poll shows that 55% of Americans now approve of the way Trump is handling the crisis, up from just 43% a week ago. Some say it’s because of Trump’s shift in tone. But maybe we just had a week when people desperately wanted to believe in fairy tales.
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