Two months ago, The Washington Post reported that its crew at the Fact Checkers database had tallied 16,241 lies in Donald Trump’s first three years squatting in the White House. Not one place in the story did they call these lies, but rather “falsehoods” and “misleading statements.” That’s the editors’ choice. I would rather see every single one of his lies called a lie in the headlines when he first makes it.
A big portion of these lies have been harmless nonsense or the pathetic narcissistic bragging we’ve all become inured to in the 1,142 days he’s been in office. But that’s not what’s been happening the past few weeks when it comes to the coronavirus. These lies are dangerous, lethal. Indeed, the spew he’s been slathering us with ought to be labeled COVID-45, a political virus.
Legal scholar Laurence Tribe tweets Trump’s latest lying idiocy:
Riiiiiiiiiiight. Every one of those doctors said what?
Here’s a clip of Trump actually making that statement while the doctors stand deadpan on his flanks. Straight faces maintained. Not one of them slipped up with an eye-roll or by reaching for a barf bag. It would have been helpful to Americans if at least one of their jaws had hit the floor.
Yes, yes. Dr. Trump, MD of nonsense, PhD of jackshit, and JD of prevarication. But his wacko claim of having an innate understanding of specialized medicine aside, it’s the outright garbage he and some of his political appointees are making about the virus that is the most disturbing. The coronavirus is not contained, tighter border controls have not worked to keep the number of infections low, people with symptoms of the infection should not go to work if they feel okay, etc., ad nauseam.
Here, from the American Hospital Association, is one view of the potential harm the virus could ultimately cause:
Trump should play more golf and zip his lips about the coronavirus for the duration of the outbreak.
Fortunately, unlike that virus, the political virus with which Trump and his Republican sycophants have infected us can be stopped. A giant turnout of our voting antibodies in November is all that’s needed. What we also need, however, is a vaccine to keep another such infection from striking us in the future.