Chicago Tribune (Sunday)

Trump’s death cult bandwagon has room for all

- REX W. HUPPKE

Howdy, folks! Welcome to President Donald Trump’s Coronaviru­s Pandemic Death-Cult Bandwagon.

ALL ABOARD! If you love Trump and don’t much care whether people — yourself included — live or die, this is the ride for you.

We’ve got our infallible president at the helm and we’re charging forward. Destinatio­n: Easter!

That’s the day President Trump said the American economy is going to open back up. He said, “You’ll have packed churches all over our country.” Hot damn! Don’t let the dramatical­ly increasing number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 and the more than 1,000 Americans who’ve already died fool you. We’ve got this thing licked and we are gonna stuff ourselves into the pews and do some hand shakin’.

“Our country wants to get back to work,” Trump said. He took the polling from this week that showed three-fourths of voters think the country’s social distancing measures should be more strict and threw it right into the “Who Cares?” bin with the rest of the so-called data and expert advice getting tossed his way.

Who needs that nonsense when you’ve got a gut feeling about a virus that’s killing people but, more importantl­y, endangerin­g your presidency? GOTTA GO WITH THE GUT, BABY! This pandemic is wrappin’ up, whether those people who keep inconvenie­ntly dying like it or not.

And we’re going to get the American economy revved up right quick, even if it means a few hundred thousand people on the Coronaviru­s Pandemic Death-Cult Bandwagon have to make an earlier-thanexpect­ed appearance at the great Trump rally in the sky.

Wise conservati­ve thinker Glenn Beck said this week: “I’d rather die than kill the country.”

And Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said he has spoken with “hundreds of people” who are willing to take a chance on their survival and get back to work to preserve the “America that all America loves” for their children and grandchild­ren.

“And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in,” Patrick said, bravely overlookin­g the liberal “fact” that going back to work too soon in the midst of a pandemic could worsen the crisis, cost lives and make it harder to preserve the America that all America loves.

Patrick and Beck and Trump and everyone else on the Coronaviru­s Pandemic Death-Cult Bandwagon are showing Americans that in order to make a powerful economic omelet, you have to break a few eggs, or in this case, cause the unnecessar­y deaths of a lot of people you don’t know and possibly a few you do know.

But c’mon, what’s there to worry about? It’s really just the stupid media making everyone nervous about the coronaviru­s.

Trump tweeted Wednesday: “The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimenta­l to my election success. The real people want to get back to work ASAP. We will be stronger than ever before!”

It’s crazy how the media has spooked governors across the country into issuing shelter-in-place orders and convinced countries like Canada and Australia and France to close their borders and gotten Spain to report more than 3,400 COVID-19 deaths and tricked Italy into reporting more than 7,500 deaths from the disease and probably paid medical experts like famed epidemiolo­gist Larry Brilliant to say that any attempt to restart the American economy by Easter would be “an error of epic proportion­s.”

PEOPLE WANT TO GET BACK TO WORK AND DONALD TRUMP’S ELECTION SUCCESS IS VERY IMPORTANT!

Are you going to listen to someone like Dr. Tom Inglesby, a health security expert at Johns Hopkins University, who said that if social distancing restrictio­ns are lifted before the outbreak is more contained, COVID-19 “would spread widely, rapidly, terribly, and could kill potentiall­y millions in the year ahead, with huge social and economic impact.”

Or are you going to listen to our gutfeeling-having president, who said Wednesday during a coronaviru­s press briefing: “I think there are certain people who would like it to not open so quickly. I think there are certain people that would like it to do financiall­y poorly because they think that would be very good as far as defeating me at the polls. … They would love to see me, for whatever reason, because we’ve done one hell of a job — nobody’s done the job that we’ve done, and it’s lucky that you have this group here right now for this problem or you wouldn’t even have a country left.”

I know my choice. I’m ignoring the nerd who wants to tank the economy just to save “potentiall­y millions” and going with the straight-talkin’ president who would gladly escort your grandma to the grave if it boosted the stock market a point and helped him win reelection.

Send us to our jobs/demise, President Trump! Everyone on this bandwagon is ready and willing. After all, it’s a death cult. Either you’re in or you’re out.

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