Accountability for crimes against humanity: Trump killed tens of thousands of Americans
Will Saletan discusses “Trump’s interference or negligence in every stage of the government’s failure: preparation, mobilization, public communication, testing, mitigation, and reopening.” Then America’s luck ran out.
“The U.S., which accounts for less than 5% of the world population, leads all other countries in global coronavirus infections and deaths” — CNBC
The most complete, fully documented account of Trump’s complicity in the deaths of 160,000 Americans.
It’s even worse than you thought. https://t.co/5xqSCJkOZW
— Will Saletan (wsaletan on Threads) (@saletan) August 9, 2020
On July 17, President Donald Trump sat for a Fox News interview at the White House. At the time, nearly 140,000 Americans were dead from the novel coronavirus. The interviewer, Chris Wallace, showed Trump a video clip in which Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned of a difficult fall and winter ahead. Trump dismissed the warning. He scoffed that experts had misjudged the virus all along. “Everybody thought this summer it would go away,” said Trump. “They used to say the heat, the heat was good for it and it really knocks it out, remember? So they got that one wrong.”
Trump’s account was completely backward. Redfield and other U.S. public health officials had never promised that heat would knock out the virus. In fact, they had cautioned against that assumption. The person who had held out the false promise of a warm-weather reprieve, again and again, was Trump. And he hadn’t gotten the idea from any of his medical advisers. He had gotten it from Xi Jinping, the president of China, in a phone call in February.
The phone call, the talking points Trump picked up from it, and his subsequent attempts to cover up his alliance with Xi are part of a deep betrayal. The story the president now tells—that he “built the greatest economy in history,” that China blindsided him by unleashing the virus, and that Trump saved millions of lives by mobilizing America to defeat it—is a lie. Trump collaborated with Xi, concealed the threat, impeded the U.S. government’s response, silenced those who sought to warn the public, and pushed states to take risks that escalated the tragedy. He’s personally responsible for tens of thousands of deaths.
This isn’t speculation. All the evidence is in the public record. But the truth, unlike Trump’s false narrative, is scattered in different places. It’s in emails, leaks, interviews, hearings, scientific reports, and the president’s stray remarks. This article puts those fragments together. It documents Trump’s interference or negligence in every stage of the government’s failure: preparation, mobilization, public communication, testing, mitigation, and reopening.
[…]
To keep the numbers low, Trump was willing to risk lives.
When the spread of the virus in the United States could no longer be denied, Trump called it the “invisible enemy.” But Trump had kept it invisible. The CDC would later acknowledge that due to woefully insufficient testing, the overwhelming majority of infections had gone undiagnosed. Models would show that by mid-February, there were hundreds of undetected infections in the United States for every known case. By the end of the month, there were thousands.
[…]
Now Trump asks us to reelect him. “We had the greatest economy in the history of the world,” he told Fox News on Wednesday. “Then we got hit with the plague from China.” But now, he promised, “We’re building it again.” In Trump’s story, the virus is a foreign intrusion, an unpleasant interlude, a stroke of bad luck. But when you stand back and look at the full extent of his role in the catastrophe, it’s amazing how lucky we were. For three years, we survived the most ruthless, reckless, dishonest president in American history. Then our luck ran out.
Trump's Wuhan Lab Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory Is Bogus, According to, Uh, Everyone || By: Tim Hume https://t.co/nOHJVkUUo2
— SafetyPin-Daily (@SafetyPinDaily) May 6, 2020
In recent days, official communications from the White House have increasingly read like campaign press releases.
(Below is from this morning.) pic.twitter.com/OklKblkALu
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) August 10, 2020
Breaking News: The U.S. has surpassed 5 million coronavirus cases, according to a New York Times database. The infection total has more than doubled over the past 2 months. https://t.co/LsCTLo5uge pic.twitter.com/cNW9PE7Rqw
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 8, 2020
If we had a detailed national plan, we could open schools.
If we had rapid point-of-care covid tests, we could open schools.
If mask-wearing were universal, we could open schools.
If schools had money to upgrade ventilation systems, we could open schools.
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) August 10, 2020
Trump/Putin re-election plan depends on COVID-19 being as deadly as possible. Start with that assumption to look ahead at what they’ll do next. https://t.co/cHQsNtG9K6
— Cheri Jacobus (@CheriJacobus) August 10, 2020
Twitter is making this ad almost impossible for anyone to find. If you can see this please retweet it. #ConsequencesForTrump https://t.co/Mj5cVIUz2p
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) August 5, 2020