The stage at the front of the Republican National Convention (RNC) on night four was a surreal parade of Republicans pointing to things that are going on right now and claiming that the only way to stop them is by electing the man currently in charge. But in addition to treating the White House with all the dignity and restraint of a gun show at the Newark DoubleTree, the night of Trump’s nomination had another symbolic purpose: It showcased the Republican Party’s ongoing disdain for public health and continuing refusal to accept the recommendation of experts.
Even as Trump was claiming that he “followed the science” on addressing the novel coronavirus pandemic, he was standing in front of a crowd of hundreds packed in almost shoulder to shoulder, with limited testing and barely a handful of visible masks. Even though the gathering was outside—which makes it safer than meetings in close confines—it still had all the makings of a “super spreader event.” This didn’t escape the notice of CNN reporter Jim Acosta, who repeatedly expressed astonishment at “all of these people, hundreds of people sitting side by side in the audience, not wearing masks” and about how “the senior White House official brushed off these concerns about the lack of social distancing at the president’s speech.”
The ranks of white chairs represented more than just places for Trump’s chosen to park their white asses during a dull evening of content-free speeches. They also roughly matched the number of Americans who die in a single day from Trump’s deliberate mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump certainly didn’t mean for the rows of closely packed white chairs to represent any sort of memorial, because the entire point of the whole week has been pretending that Trump took swift action against the coronavirus and everything was just great. No one who has taken the stage through the entire week has acknowledged the millions of cases in the United States, the suffering of those afflicted, the 185,000 families mourning their dead. Instead, the RNC followed the great tradition that Trump established from even before the pandemic struck: demeaning scientists, dismissing the threat, and openly sneering at the losses America has suffered.
In total, 1,500 people were there to listen to Trump drone on about his “bold” actions on a day when 1,143 Americans died. And watching Rudy Giuliani gesticulate in front of those chairs was a good reminder that more Americans died of COVID-19 during the RNC than died on 9/11. By far.
Those four nights, as Republicans were speaking again and again as if the pandemic is in the past, victory is won, and didn’t Donald Trump do such a good job, saw 4,232 Americans die from COVID-19. And that’s ignoring the fact that deaths are still being chronically underreported, especially in Republican-controlled states. What Donald Trump rolled out on the South Lawn wasn’t just a demonstration of contempt for social distancing guidelines, it was a kind of instant Arlington—an accidental monument to a single day of the Americans he has sent to die.
And of course, there’s a not-so-happily-ever-after to this story. In cramming people together at the White House, and Fort McHenry, on every night of this “celebration” in which making believe that the virus is gone has been a key talking point, Trump and his supporters have helped to make sure that it will not go away. There will be victims among the crowd of Trump supporters. There will be victims among those exposed to these supporters. And victims. And victims.
Because no matter how much everyone wishes the pandemic is over, it’s not. Hydroxychloroquine is not a miracle cure. Oleander is not a miracle cure. Plasma is not a miracle cure. And vaccines are still months away. People are still dying, and what Trump did on Thursday night wasn’t just deliver the worst acceptance speech in modern history, it was to model exactly the wrong behavior at exactly the wrong time.
And it can never be forgotten that America’s worst-in-the-world results from the pandemic didn’t just happen. It wasn’t even just the malignant incompetence Trump brings to so many issues. The decision to allow COVID-19 to ravage the country was deliberate, made expressly because Trump believed that the people sitting in front of him on Thursday night would gain an advantage by allowing Americans in blue states to die.