His American carnage

Two hundred thousand souls are now confirmed to have lost their lives i n our nation this year to a virus that, with swift and consistent and coordinated federal action from President Trump on down, could have been contained.

It is a sum three times the number of Americans killed in Vietnam, 66 times those killed on Sept. 11, 50,000 more t han the total killed annually by lung cancer. A number equal to the entire population of

Salt Lake City or Tallahassee.

And the unfathomable figure almost certainly understates by tens of thousands the true toll.

The virus has killed Black and Hispanic people at t wo to three times the rate of whites. And though it preys most on the elderly and those with underlying health conditions — who, ahem, are people too — it has spared no one, of any age or background.

Yet the president of the United States, who more than 30 times told his country the virus would magically vanish though he knew better, who has peddled j unk science from his bull pulpit, who has encouraged his followers to resist sane public health measures, had the gall to stand before a cheering crowd of mostly unmasked acolytes Monday night and say COVID-19 “affects virtually nobody.” Affects virtually nobody.

In a talk to the United Nations Tuesday, he blamed China, where the virus started and from which, in his words, it “escaped.” This is like a mayor who turned off the firehoses and assured his citizens that flames would just disappear blaming the man miles away who lit the match.

China’s failures do not excuse America’s. They assuredly do not excuse Donald Trump’s. More than anyone else, he owns this American carnage.