Americans have paid the price for Trump’s lies
So now we have irrefutable proof that President Donald Trump lied to the American people virtually from the start about the threat of the coronavirus.
Sadly, this is no great surprise. Trump lies so much that it’s safe to doubt the veracity of anything that comes out of his mouth.
Even so, it’s profoundly disturbing to hear him cavalierly admitting he knew he wasn’t telling the truth when he was assuring the public early in the pandemic that the coronavirus was no big deal. In an excerpt from recorded interviews with journalist Bob Woodward, Trump said on Feb. 7 he knew the virus was deadly, airborne and much worse than the flu, but he decided not to share that information with the public, “because I don’t want to create a panic.”
In his twisted, narcissistic mind, Trump no doubt believes this admission casts him in a positive light. Here’s the concerned national patriarch risking his own credibility to keep Americans from freaking out and doing who knows what. Maybe making a run on the grocery stores, canceling vacations and pulling kids out of school? Well, good thing that didn’t happen. Oh, wait — it did.
We suspect even his excuse for lying is less than truthful, and that it was the stock market he was really trying to keep calm.
If Trump was motivated purely by a desire to protect people, as he claims, he would have followed his deception with fast action. After his sievelike China travel ban (it’s not a real ban if tens of thousands of travelers from China continued to enter the U.S.), he would have ordered a mobilization of mass COVID-19 testing and tracing programs. He would have supported the sensible recommendations of his own health experts, rather than repeatedly trying to muzzle and sideline them while pushing unproven miracle cures. He would have donned a face mask. And he most certainly wouldn’t have urged states to lift lockdown orders prematurely.
Trump’s main job as president is to protect the U.S. from serious threats, be it foreign interference, civil unrest, economic calamity or infectious disease. He has failed on all counts, and people have died as a consequence. That’s no lie.