More than 35,000 Americans have died in little more than a month. A new analysis shows that the death toll is 10X higher than it would have been if Trump had introduced social distancing just two weeks earlier.
Intelligence agencies began warning Trump of the threat in January. When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar tried to talk to him about the virus in January, he switched the subject to vaping. When Peter Navarro put the warnings of mass deaths from the virus in a memo, he ignored it. Trump was warned about everything that could happen, but all through February he kept golfing. And holding rallies. And as March began, he was still partying with donors at Mar-a-Lago.
And now the death toll is 10X higher than it needed to be. And Trump’s search for a scapegoat continues.
Obama?
Fact is, it’s not Obama’s fault. He handled the H1N1 pandemic as well as any President could have—in his first year—and fewer than 13,000 died. He set up a pandemic response team in the White House and briefed the Trump team about what to do when this happened. OK, he didn’t prepare millions of tests for COVID-19 and leave them in on the shelves for Trump. But then again, Obama left office in 2017. Nearly three years before COVID-19 even existed.
The Democrats?
Fact is, the Democrats weren’t the ones downplaying it. On February 24, the very day Nancy Pelosi went to Chinatown in San Francisco to tell people not to be racist, Trump tweeted: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.” The Democrats were sounding the alarm very loudly. That’s why Trump called it “their new hoax” at rallies on February 28 and March 2.
China?
Fact is, blaming China in April 2020 doesn’t help anyone. Especially when Trump went soft on them in January because he was more interested in closing his partial B.S. trade deal at the start of an election year. We can deal with China later. We need mass testing yesterday!
WHO, now?
Fact is, attacking (and defunding) the World Health Organization in the midst of a global pandemic is simply dumb. And dangerous. Especially when Trump rejected the WHO tests that the rest of the world started using in February. It’s now mid-April and America is still testing less on a per capita basis than dozens of countries, including Germany, Portugal, Iceland, UAE, Luxembourg, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, Latvia, Slovenia and Lithuania.
The Governors?
That’s ridiculous! The Governors (most of them, at least) are the ones actually leading in this Trump-induced crisis. But fact is, we could see this one coming. After taking zero responsibility for the total failure of the federal response to COVID-19, Trump now wants to shift his focus to re-opening the country and put cash-strapped, locked-down Governors in charge of the mass testing that only the federal government has the resources to properly manage. Sorry, Mr. Total Authority, that’s one blame-shift that’s not going to work.
The Mirror?
When Trump wakes up every morning and struggles for an hour to get his hair “just right,” he’s faced with the harsh, ugly, unavoidable truth: Tens of thousands of Americans are dead because of him. It’s his fault. He’s to blame. He should have listened to Dr. Fauci, not Dr. Hannity. When he looks in the mirror, the true super-spreader of the “Trump Virus” is staring him in the face.
But blame himself? Accept responsibility? LOL. That’s never going to happen. So, right on cue, Trump came full circle again today:
It’s Obama’s fault again!
Note to Mike Pence and the Trump Cabinet: You know this guy is certifiable. It’s never too late to invoke the 25th Amendment.
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