USA TODAY International Edition
Bury COVID dead at Mar- a- Lago
Let 500,000 deaths be Trump’s monument
How can we honor the halfmillion Americans who lost their lives to COVID- 19 while marking former President Donald Trump’s shameless failure to “preserve, protect and defend” this country and its Constitution? Easy. Let’s bury the dead at Mar- a- Lago.
This small measure of justice would have an obvious historical precedent. Arlington, the former home of Robert E. Lee that is now Arlington National Cemetery, became a final resting place for Union soldiers in the spring 1864 — after 82,000 soldiers died in one month of fighting. Who could argue this wasn’t a just punishment? Lee had abandoned his post in the U. S. Army to lead the army of what Frederick Douglass called the “slaveholders’ rebellion.”
Lee’s treachery was obvious. Trump’s crimes against his country, however, are far more devious, and continue as he remains dedicated to undermining our democracy. The expresident tried to refuse to give up his power, even after he was defeated in a fair election. And you cannot dissect the ex- president’s incitement against Congress, his vice president and our constitutional order from his monstrous approach to the pandemic.
Instead of embracing a unifying, comprehensive assault against COVID- 19, he did all he could to turn his followers against science, their fellow Americans and their own health. Instead of embracing the basic safety measures his own government advised, Trump actively took steps that spread the virus, endangering millions and costing one member of the Secret Service part of his leg.
It’s hard to call Trump’s failures when it came to addressing the pandemic “failures,” since most were intentional. And they began long before the novel coronavirus ever appeared.
The pandemic playbook
In 2018, the same year the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense was disbanded, the Trump administration began gutting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staffing in China. The cuts included “health experts, scientists and other professionals who might have been able to help China mount an earlier response to the novel coronavirus, as well as provide the U. S. government with more information about what was coming,” Reuters reported.
Trump’s team also tossed aside the Obama administration’s 69- page playbook for confronting a pandemic based on learnings from containing Ebola.
Beginning last March, Trump silenced the CDC and continually offered rosy predictions that undermined caution, even as America was hitting a peak of deaths and cases that dwarfed April’s carnage. He complained that we were testing too many people, turned opposition to masking into a cornerstone of the right’s approach to the pandemic, and supported the mobs protesting states’ restrictions.
Trump spent the last month of his presidency ignoring the pandemic and obsessively spreading lies about the election he just lost and trying to overturn the result. On Jan. 6, Trump sent his supporters to the U. S. Capitol to “fight” against Congress completing its duty in affirming the electoral votes. When the insurrection that Trump’s followers launched was done, five Americans were dead.
On the same day, the United States reported 3,964 deaths from the virus, a record up until that point. More than 95,000 Americans died of COVID- 19 in January alone.
Mrs. Lee’s rose garden
Even if you don’t agree with the experts from a Lancet Commission stating that Trump’s “inept and insufficient” response made him responsible for about 40% or 200,000 of the COVID- 19 deaths in the United States, you cannot deny the horror of Trump’s lies.
Trump flooded the media with his self- serving malarkey, knowing his followers would believe him. And his followers have paid a severe cost for their faith. According to health care analyst Charles Gaba, the 100 counties with the highest COVID- 19 death rates voted for Trump by 21 percentage points.
For some slight measure of justice, we must follow the example the Union set with Arlington. Families of COVID- 19 victims who cannot afford a decent burial should be offered a chance for their loved ones to become permanent members of Mar- a- Lago, without paying the $ 200,000 membership fee that Trump doubled when he “won” the presidency.
There are now more than 500,000 COVID deaths in America. Inspired by the 30 Union soldiers who rest eternally in Mrs. Lee’s rose garden, we should bury as many of them as we can at Mara- Lago, until every foot of the property is occupied.
In a just nation, there would be only one monument to Robert E. Lee — Arlington National Ceremony. Likewise, a revamped Mar- a- Lago filled with the literal reminders of the death Trump enabled and mocked would be a just monument to a monumental disaster of a presidency.