Opinion: This is what happens when we put a real estate developer in charge of a pandemic https://t.co/1N2R27a2kQ
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 1, 2020
Real estate developers begin as storytellers. They drive a few stakes into an empty expanse and begin spinning a tale of winding streets and welcoming houses, of shops and schools and playgrounds, a community center, a swimming pool, a golf course. Or maybe instead of a subdivision, they tell the story of a skyscraper, an apartment complex, a retirement village.
They need people to believe them. Bankers to loan the money. Governments to grant the permits and abate the taxes. Tenants to sign the leases. Buyers to take out the mortgages. As if by alchemy, the story comes true because people think it will come true. Enough belief makes the whole thing fly.
Looking through the lens of President Trump’s real estate background is the only way I can begin to understand his response to the novelcoronavirus, which has otherwise been as baffling as it has been feckless. More than three months after his belated declaration of a national emergency, as the country continues to set records for the number of new cases diagnosed each day, Trump seldom speaks of the pandemic, except to disparage the disease and talk down its consequences.
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The President of the United States literally doesn’t care that our most nefarious foreign adversary put a bounty on the heads of our soldiers. His actual response tonight, I shit you not, is to tweet super racist Pocahontas jokes. Amazing.— Bryan Behar (@bryanbehar) July 1, 2020
“Fascists are never content to merely lie; they must transform their lie into a new reality, and they must persuade people to believe in the unreality they’ve created. And if you get people to do that, you can convince them to do anything.”
– Hannah Arendt
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Pentagon officials were ‘pounding on the door’ to get Trump to do something about Russia’s assassination bounty.https://t.co/QEQvDXwF2c— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) June 30, 2020
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“CIA analysts determined that the information was credible and showed a Russian plot to target U.S. and coalition forces…One former official said that there was a significant amount of intelligence and that it left little doubt…that Russia was targeting American forces.†https://t.co/45jIfmmZ4c
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