Really ??? Do normal risk calculations apply to the Trumps ?
For example, back in 2016 what did you think the odds were that Donald Trump would steamroll Jeb Bush and Chris Christie ? And then Hillary Clinton ?
Earlier on, the Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts bankruptcy in 2004 erased some $500 million in debts. Trump declared $80 million of these erased debts — losses offloaded to lenders — as personal losses on his 2005 Federal and State 1040s. Bragged about it.
Nothing happened.
When Trump got to the White House, he obsessed with Ebola making the jump and destroying him with horrible videos going online. How unfair would it be if dozens of Americans died ugly !!
Trump’s fantasy world could not survive getting blamed for such an event.
OTOH: Barack Obama and CDC had enabled full isolation and treatment in Atlanta for American Ebola victims. Seven were infected in Africa and returned home under this program. Two of them died despite the very best treatment.
Trump found out in winter of 2018 that all these federal programs were controlled / funded out of the White House. Through the offices of his National Security Advisor and the National Security Council.
Thing was, if Trump was going to attack one program, he had to attack all of them to assure a bureaucratic victory.
So, story has it, Trump called in H.R. McMaster, his NSA, and ordered him to disband the long-standing Global Health Team (from at least the 1950s) and Obama’s Ebola Task Force. McMaster knew this meant killing off $4 billion in Nat Sec trigger projects. He turned Trump down immediately.
So Trump canned McMaster and hired John Bolton. Whose first task in April and May 2018 was to carry out Trump’s direct sabotage on everything from Border Quarantine to public health communication coordination:
How wonderful.
Trump got to dump everything on the states.
And the careerist NSA Bolton got to avoid being tagged as “Scaramucci II.” (Scaramucci, as Director of Communications, had come and gone in July of 2017.)
Then Ebola pulled a fast one and stayed in Africa.
The White House forgot about Ebola.
Then on September 9, 2019, Donald Trump decreed that the White House would also forget about John Bolton. And everybody within 3 degrees of separation from Donald Trump also forget that Bolton had sent the anti-pandemic management crews and liaisons home and, yes, frozen everything from border quarantine to public health PSA’s.
Sadly for the pushing-1,200,000 COVID deaths in America, that teeny-weeny coronavirus made the most of the situation. No one was quarantined coming back from China apart from a few cruise ship passengers. Fully 340,000 people returned in January and February after the December 19, 2019 WHO pandemic declaration with a lethality assessment ranked equal to the 2003/04 SARS-1 outbreak.
Nobody has a clue how many of these 340,000 returnees were carriers.
And if anything, Trump seemed to work for COVID.
A few, including at DK, noticed what he was up to.
So now, applying hindsight. let’s look at Trump statements from January into March of 2020.
Some 300,000 people returned in January. No where near “one person.”
And that is typical.
And none of the projects in the Global Health Team system were activated. The money was still there from Congress. None of it was spent.
My guess: COVID loves this guy.
And he gets away with it. And what “it” is doesn’t matter.
Deaths and taxes go flying by with not a scratch on him.
As to SCOTUS granting him immunity, why bother ??? Apart from paper verdicts in New York State, so far nothing sticks.