Trump tells many lies. But telling us he was “the most pro-life President in history” and, under him, we’d finally be allowed to say “Merry Christmas” again are two of the biggest.
As his last Christmas in office approaches, Trump has now golfed and tweeted his way through more than 300,000 American deaths, most of them preventable. As of this morning, only 8 countries in the world have more than 50,000 COVID-19 deaths. Only 4—the USA, Brazil, India and Mexico—have more than 100,000.
The US is now the only country in the world with more than 200,000 deaths. And the only country with more than 300,000 deaths.
- Germany (population 83 million) has fewer deaths than Texas.
- Japan (population 127 million) has fewer deaths than Arkansas.
- China’s densely populated neighbor South Korea (population 52 million) has fewer deaths than Montana.
For millions of Americans in this year of death and devastation, this will be a lonely, socially distanced Christmas filled with grief and anxiety. Millions have been plunged into poverty. Millions face food insecurity. Hundreds of thousands will face Christmas without one or more of their loved ones, wondering forever if their deaths could have been prevented.
Trump’s failure to protect America, his recklessness and remorselessness, were brought home again by the latest revelations about the lengths to which Trump-appointed “advisers” were willing to go in order to infect the entire nation and bring about “herd immunity.”
Paul Alexander’s emails contain such medical wisdom as:
Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk…. so we use them to develop herd… we want them infected.
And also:
So the bottom line is if it is more infectiouness [sic] now, the issue is who cares?… If it is causing more cases in young, my word is who cares… as long as we make sensible decisions, and protect the elderely [sic] and nursing homes, we must go on with life…. who cares if we test more and get more positive tests.
Whether or not Alexander’s idiocy changed official policy is not the point. It clearly infected Trump’s thinking and statements on the topic of “herd mentality.” (Mass death be damned.)
“Morally abominable”
The clip at the top of this page shows some of the discussion between MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and journalist Mehdi Hasan about these new emails—and Trump’s failed coronavirus response—last night. Here’s a transcript of part of that dialogue:
CHRIS HAYES: “One of the the things that I think is important to keep your eyes on in this… is to distinguish what I think makes the Trump response so morally abominable. There’s lots of policy makers who have done… a bad job with the virus. Democrat. Republican. Local level. There’s other countries… from Belgium to France to Spain to Canada that have made mistakes, that have had bad responses. There’s a specificity to the cynicism of the way that Trump and those that support him attacked this that I really don’t think has been replicated anywhere else, except for maybe Brazil.”
MEHDI HASAN: “Nowhere else in the world, I would say, including Brazil, because at least Brazil sorted out their economic side in terms of sending money to people. I think it is truly unique globally. I think it is truly unique historically…. Donald Trump… presided over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people—preventable deaths—here at home, in the United States of America…. You talk about morally abominable, it’s sociopathic. You mentioned earlier in the show the four words that will be the epitaph: ‘We want more infected.’ What about, ‘who cares’ in those emails? That jumped out at me. This guy Paul Alexander writes, ‘if we have more cases, more people infected, more positive tests, who cares?’ And you take ‘who cares?’ you add it to Donald Trump’s ‘it is what it is,’ you add it to Jared Kushner’s ‘that’s their problem’ when people in New York are dying. This is sociopathic. This is not just morally abominable. And I think people should be held to account. I think they should be prosecuted. The people behind these preventable deaths should be prosecuted when they leave office on January 20th.”
Trump promised to make America great again. When it came to COVID-19, he made it far worse than average—and less competent than Third World countries that controlled the virus with cheap face masks.
Today, the US death rate per million population is 948 vs. a global average of 212.7.
In other words, if America had a death rate that was simply in line with the global average, 245,000 of those who have died from COVID-19 this year would still be alive.
Trump’s failure is monumental, historic—and morally abominable. And he still can’t understand why 81 million Americans wanted him gone.
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