On Sunday night and Monday morning, Forever-Impeached President Donald Trump went on a crazy Twitter tirade urging the American economy to go back to business as usual in 15 days, setting up a clash with states and public-health experts.
The coronavirus outbreak has wreaked unprecedented havoc on the US economy with the Dow Jones tanking to levels lower than when Trump was inaugurated. Entire industries have nearly come to a standstill and unemployment claims have surged as millions of Americans find themselves out of work or with severely reduced hours.
As of Monday, there were over 35,200 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, and more than 470 deaths in the US. New York, which has reported nearly 17,000 cases, has been hit particularly hard.
But Trump appeared eager to return as much of the economy as possible to normal in a matter of days, as states and public-health experts have urged containment measures to limit the virus’ spread, closing schools, many businesses, and even public spaces like parks.
Late on Sunday, Trump wrote, “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” adding that at the end of a 15-day period of social distancing that began last Monday, “WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!”
WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2020 [1]
On Monday morning, Trump retweeted several accounts spreading misinformation about the dangers and severity of the virus, including tweets from an account called @SexCounseling that said, “We The People are smart enough to keep away from others if we know that we are sick or they are sick!” and another user who said: “Correct. 15 days, then we keep the high risk groups protected as necessary and the rest of us go back to work.”
The fear of the virus cannot collapse our economy that President Trump has built up.
We The People are smart enough to keep away from others if we know that we are sick or they are sick!
After 15 days are over the world can begin to heal!
— Dawn Michael, PhD💗 (@SexCounseling) March 23, 2020 [2]
Correct. 15 days, then we keep the high risk groups protected as necessary and the rest of us go back to work.
— Steph (@steph93065) March 23, 2020 [3]
Public-health experts have pointed out that the virus is highly contagious and can be spread by people who have no symptoms and don’t know they’re ill, meaning it’s impossible to protect those high-risk groups while going about life as usual. For this reason, they have urged Americans to stay at home as much as possible, and multiple states have severely restricted economic activity and travel.
Over the weekend, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York said the crisis “is not a short-term situation.”
“This is not a long weekend. This is not a week,” he said, adding that “it is going to be four months, six months, nine months.”
Twitter was horrified that Trump was putting money and the economy over people’s lives:
This is not how it works. If new coronavirus cases are still rising on a daily basis next week, then protecting the "high risk groups" means keeping the economy shut down. Trump should know better than to provide false hope like this. pic.twitter.com/RbGgd7ZcBi [4]
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 23, 2020 [5]
Did the coronavirus write this tweet? https://t.co/MNW1N54dMv [6]
— Respectable Lawyer (@RespectableLaw) March 23, 2020 [7]
It would help if you could translate this into exactly how many dead bodies you're good with for every point of the Dow. https://t.co/PoAo0XfwvE [8]
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) March 23, 2020 [9]
Translation:
I can't get re-elected during this self-created clusterfuck. People dying looks bad in TV ads. The stock market is more important to me than people so my plan is to send poor sick people back to work and further spread this virus while selling that everything is ok https://t.co/Q1PFUdt24W [10]
— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) March 23, 2020 [11]
Throwing cold water on social distancing and emergency measures is perhaps the worst thing the President could do right now. Very dangerous. https://t.co/vwuG3GlboX [12]
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) March 23, 2020 [13]
Is this dumb orange motherfucker actually thinking of encouraging people to just go out and infect each other? https://t.co/ccHSCbwZ6F [14]
— The Rude Pundit (@rudepundit) March 23, 2020 [15]
NBC News [16] has also released their own story, saying that Trump doesn’t want people seeing empty airports because that could hurt his chances of re-election.
"[Trump] has repeatedly raised concerns in meetings about the optics of grounded planes & empty airports, according to 2 people familiar with the meetings. He’s argued that those images would look bad for him & could further drag down the economy" https://t.co/1Py7Cx7XMf [17]
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 23, 2020 [18]