It’s clearer than ever that Trump used mass death as a political weapon. Do Americans now think that’s normal?
More than 750,000 people have died from the coronavirus plague in the United States. Epidemiologists and other public health professionals predict that more than a million will die before the pandemic is finally vanquished. Millions more Americans will experience long-term and perhaps lifelong negative health impacts after surviving COVID-19.
Ultimately, Donald Trump and his regime are responsible for many of the deaths — probably a large majority of them — caused by the coronavirus pandemic. At almost every key moment, Trump and his inner circle, along with other Republican elected officials who followed his lead, made decisions based on personal self-interest, greed and political partisanship, rather than a sincere effort to save American lives.
New reporting in Politico this week details the Trump regime’s de facto acts of democide against the American people, based on the congressional release of “emails and transcripts with former senior CDC officials about the White House’s attempts to sideline the agency at critical moments” early in the pandemic:
The emails and transcripts detail how in the early days of 2020 Trump and his allies in the White House blocked media briefings and interviews with CDC officials, attempted to alter public safety guidance normally cleared by the agency and instructed agency officials to destroy evidence that might be construed as political interference.
The documents further underscore how Trump appointees tried to undermine the work of scientists and career staff at the CDC to control the administration’s messaging on the spread of the virus and the dangers of transmission and infection.
Some may wonder why Trump and his inner circle were so reckless and bold, acting without apparent fear of any accountability or serious negative consequences? The answer is simple: Donald Trump is a fascist authoritarian and likely a sociopath. To his political cult members and the current Republican Party as a whole, he is essentially a demigod. Trump never intended to leave office. As the events of last Jan. 6 should make clear, Trump was willing to do virtually anything — including literally staging a coup — to remain in power.