At first, you see another Trump insider saying that Trump has no conscience and think, “Of course not, we’ve seen that for four years now.” Then you read: “Deaths don’t matter to him,” and say to yourself, “We know, we have heard all about the “tests mean we have more cases,” and know that he cares about numbers, not the people dead.
We have to fight that numbed sense because we become less sharp ourselves. Our cynical “I know” attitude keeps us from absorbing the horror. The president’s primary responsibility, indeed, in many ways the only responsibility – is to defend Americans from attack. In short, he or she is supposed to want to save lives.
Trump doesn’t care about lives, and we’re assured of such by a man who knows Trump as well as anyone. (No one “really” knows Trump, it would take a doctor with unlimited time and a keg of sodium pentobarbital to really get to “know” Trump). But this guy knows Trump pretty well. From Mediaite [1]:
Art of the Deal co-author Tony Schwartz said on MSNBC Friday that President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic shows that he has “no conscience.”
It is one thing to say he has no conscience when he is actively trying to yank the only health insurance people have, or even that his idea of “immigration enforcement” involves jailing kids and separating families, but outright death, people dying because he needs his win, trading lives for a two point bump in approval? I think that’s on a level at least on par with the kids, if not greater, since he’s doing it so directly and so clearly for self-gain.
Schwartz even went so far as to say, “The deaths — I know this is extreme — the deaths don’t matter to him. If it’s this decision between saving himself and saving others, it is no contest.”
He said Trump cares about opening the economy soon “not because he cares about the people who are being affected, but because he cares about their votes, and he believes, rightly or wrony, that people are going to be more concerned with going back to work than they are with protecting their lives.”
No doubt about the first conclusion. If it’s a decision between helping save the lives of Americans versus saving his political life (and thus, possibly his freedom), he will “win” every time.
On the second, I might have a different take. He knows that the polls show that people are more reluctant to go back to work over protecting their lives. He is thinking long term. He is thinking about October, and where the economy stands in October, in my opinion. Trump is banking on people forgetting how scared they were to go back to work if they note that the economy has improved by October – and he can take credit. It’s still about him, just a different way of getting there.
Of course, the major gamble is all this can be wrong and we’ll have 150,000 dead and a terrible economy in October – he’ll still be talking about everything being perfect because he doesn’t care.
Trump isn’t educated enough to understand that he can shout “we’re open!” as much as he wants, and until people feel safe, the economy will limp along.
Typical Trump. He does everything half-ass. We bought 90 days to get testing, tracing, a long term plan, and we paid an enormous economic sacrifice. But because it’s Trump, he doesn’t care about doing it “right” (or simply doesn’t know how), and he didn’t get the testing, tracing, plan, and is now going to open the economy “half-assed.” He’s going to ensure we get the worst of both worlds. We’ll get a shitty economy, with extra people dying.
But he doesn’t care. If he can somehow spin it as he is the only one caring about people’s jobs (instead of just getting more economic recovery to average folks upfront, $2000 a month to every adult for 3 months, instead of billions to Boeing and Wall Street), he put economic pressure on people precisely because it would lead them to demand to work, thus supporting him.
He truly doesn’t care about people dying. Most presidents would have real difficulty sleeping at night, knowing the decision’s weight. I bet Trump sleeps like a baby when medicated properly.
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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom