Every last horrific thing occurring in America right now, a deadly epidemic and economic disaster, is the result of Donald J. Trump’s malicious nature. It is true that Republicans nationwide are complicit in promoting Trump’s deadly assault on the American people, but it all begins and ends with Trump.
Although it has been debated and discussed ad nauseam, one can generalize that Trump’s actions, and lack thereof, are driven by greed, an inhumane lack of empathy, and malicious narcissism.
Now that the Republican historical revisionism is raging after the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic has finally set in, Trump and his Republican stooges are literally blaming the lack of leadership needed to combat the deadly virus on any- and everything except Trump. However, recent revelations inform that the blame rests solely with Trump; he was duly warned over and over again that a pandemic would decimate the economy and cost an enormous number of Americans’ lives.
It is absolutely true that Trump is the personification of incompetence and ignorance, but those overriding character traits have nothing whatsoever to do with the disastrous state America finds itself today. The raging spread of COVID-19 in America is due to Trump’s sheer malicious indifference to human life.
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As much as it pains this author, it is accurate to state that Trump would be hailed as a national hero if he had heeded the advice of scientists, medical experts, the Pentagon, and national intelligence agencies long before the coronavirus arrived in America. It is safe to say that except for his evangelical and racist acolytes’ mindset, most reasonable people believe Trump’s flagrant refusal to act represents mind-numbing disdain for Americans.
Despite warnings in 2017 by the Obama Administration to help prepare Trump for the devastation to American lives and the economy as the result of a pandemic, Trump did nothing. In fact, he disbanded a highly effective pandemic response task force, slashed funding for the CDC, and spent three months downplaying the existential threat to the nation the novel coronavirus posed; those actions were borne of pure malice.
That lack of action was, and still is, not due to Trump’s glaring incompetence or his world-renowned ignorance; he was provided superb intelligence by extremely competent public servants, including public servants within his own administration – still, he refused to take action. In fact, Trump claims that he knew long before anyone else that COVID-19 was a pandemic, and yet he failed to act on any advice from military leaders, health experts, and intelligence agencies.
Just last year Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services ran a series of exercises from January to August simulating an influenza pandemic with the same results as those shared by the outgoing Obama Administration. The “simulation’s sobering results” were released in October 2019 and “drove home just how underfunded, underprepared and uncoordinated the federal government would be for a life-or-death battle with a virus for which no treatment existed.”
That report was marked “not to be disclosed” and laid out in stark detail repeated cases of “confusion” in the exercise. Federal agencies jockeyed over who was in charge. State officials and hospitals struggled to figure out what kind of equipment was stockpiled or available. Cities and states went their own ways on school closings. In the latest draft of the Worldwide Threat Assessment nothing had changed except more Trump budget cuts to agencies tasked with protecting America. The still deliberately blocked report stated that America was horribly unprepared and at great risk without immediate action.
”The United States will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.” (author bold)
It is a sad state of affairs that the “increased calls for support” are being made by America’s desperate governors, but that is the result of a malicious despot with no regard for the “massive rates of death and disability” or the negative effects on the economy.
Trump is an inherently evil piece of work and his malice toward Americans has not abated even as the effects of doing nothing are delivering precisely what experts, including in Trump’s own administration, predicted would happen. Trump is still sabotaging efforts to slow the spread of the deadly virus by downplaying the importance of the CDC’s call for Americans to don masks for trips outside the home.
Of course Trump is incompetent, but his months-long opposition to take any steps to stop the spread of COVID-19 are not borne of incompetence; it is driven by malice and animus towards the American people. It is the same situation with Trump’s Republican sycophants who support a man they know has as little regard for Americans as they do as a matter of course.
It bears repeating that Trump did not create the novel coronavirus, nature did. However, he is solely responsible for its rampant spread across America. That is not incompetence or ignorance; it is an evil attack on American citizens that will continue unabated no matter how many thousands of innocent Americans perish, or how much economic devastation a mentally-defective narcissist wreaks on the nation.
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
