With Blood on His Hands
200,000 Americans are dead.
200,000 Americans are dead.
Probably more really.
And today, we find out that Trump was not ignorant of the facts, Trump was not just putting out happy talk of what he wanted in that crucial time from the end of January through April. He knew, he always knew just how deadly the coronavirus was, he knew it was worse than the flu, knew it was highly contagious, spreading through the air like dirt in the duststorm, knew it could/would kill tens of thousands of Americans. He knew all this and more.
He just didn’t care.
He didn’t care. He let it happen to protect his glorious stock market, his ‘amazing’ economy, (not his really, that’s another article), he let it happen to save his reelection. That’s what he cared about. Not your grandparents, not your husband, wife, partner, lover, friends, not your children. No. His reelection.
That’s all he cared about. Screw the rest.
How do we know? Because it’s an election year and Washington Post editor Bob Woodward has another damn book out, ‘Rage’, (I have it on pre-order), and he sat down with Trump 18 times, 18 TIMES! For interviews. And Bob records his stuff so people can’t come back later and claim, “I never said that!” And Bob will play the tape. Nixon taught him much. Trump? Trump never learns anything.
What did he tell Woodward?
“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward on March 19, even as he had declared a national emergency over the virus days earlier. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”
He said “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed…It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.” This is while he was telling the American public they didn’t have to worry, that it was the flu, it was just going to go away….
Go away, no more dangerous than the flu, play it down, always down, that’s what he likes to do. How many people believed him? How many ignored doctors, ignored loved ones and didn’t take even minimal precautions because they believed the man they voted for, the man they trusted.
How many do you know believed Trump, believed him when he said it was nothing, it was a hoax, that it would blow over.
How many of those people are sick?
How many of those people are no longer here to praise the man who they believed, the man that helped get them killed.
200,000 dead, how many because they believed a man who never gave a damn about them?
Why would Trump admit to depraved indifference to human life? Why would he sit down and talk with one of the most notorious outers of presidential secrets? My guess it’s the same ego that makes him proclaim himself a genius, expert in all things, and the only one who can fix (fill in the blank). He thought he could beat Bob Woodward at the game Woodward has honed to a sharp point. Bob is just a member of the ‘fake news’ and He is ‘The Donald’. He lost. The proof is hours of stupid things on tape, and soon in print.
Trump now says it was a ‘political hit job’ and that his lying to the people ‘showed leadership’:
“We have to show leadership, and leadership is all about confidence. Confidence is all about confidence in our country.”
“I’m a cheerleader for this country. We want to show confidence. We don’t want to instill panic,” He now says.
All of this is the opposite of leadership, the opposite of what was needed. He lied for his own petty needs, showing how small a man he truly is… as if we needed more examples.
And thousands have died needlessly.
There is blood on his hands, the blood of people who put him in that office, blood that will not wash off.
Lies Catch Up With Kellyanne
Kellyanne Conway is stepping down to attend to her family. Her daughter, 15, horrified at the administration that her mother's lies are supporting, has said she will file for emancipation from her parents.
Kellyanne Conway is stepping down to attend to her family. Her daughter, 15, horrified at the administration that her mother's lies are supporting, has said she will file for emancipation from her parents.
I feel for the daughter, I wish her well and hope she can get the help she needs.
But...
Ah, there is always a but, isn't there?
Kellyanne Conway has supported, lied for, and excused an administration that has committed human rights abuses, obstructed justice, carried out vindictive campaigns against supposed ‘enemies’, betrayed our troops, and she herself committed numerous ethics violations, cheerfully. She lied, knew she was lying, didn’t care and grinned while doing it.
No sympathy for her, none.
I hope she and her husband are able get their family whole, I hope their children can find their own peace with the family and the world. I do.
But I see no reason to excuse her behavior, no reason to excuse her cheerleading of the horrible policies of the Trump administration. No sympathy for the problems she herself has caused within her family with her support of this criminal administration, no reason to view softly her resignation after all she has said about immigrants, about ripping children away from their families, about excusing the crimes of this administration with eyerolls and lies.
No sympathy, none. And also, little for her husband, George Conway. He may have been a never-Trumper, and a founder of the anti-Trump ‘Lincoln Project’, but he was a lawyer who helped build today’s GOP that brought us Trump. George may not like Trump, but he was a carpenter on the platform on which Trump now stands. Thank you for your work against Trump, but can’t say it makes up for the work you did to get us here.
And here we are.
An est. 200,000 Americans dead, a virus burning uncontrolled through the entire country, Double digit unemployment, economy cratered, millions of Americans hurting… and I just can’t feel sympathy for the main excuser of it all.
Kellyanne leaves at the end of the week (after the convention, so she’ll still have a lot of lying to do), to go back to her family and tell them she was just ‘doing her job’, you know, ‘obeying orders’ so she could keep her ‘access’ and ‘power’. Maybe they’ll believe her (I pray they won’t excuse her), but I hope they ask her the obvious question:
“Why?”
Gee.
Hope she has a better answer than usual.
She might try, for one, telling the truth.