Trump and Covid, Inc.

that one looked not sufficiently amused to me ( :

That is actually what is happening.lol.

I kind of hoped this stream would move beyond blaming Trump alone for Covid by late 2021...but hey, always room for improvement lol.

i don't think anyone in the world blames Trump alone. i'm only holding him responsible for the deaths in the US (although pulling US scientists out of Wuhan wasn't the greatest of ideas either).

people might start to forgive once he starts to pay for it. we'll see.

How can you hold him responsible for all U.S deaths when most of them occurred in situations where Trump held no real authority? That's like a tenant blaming a landlord for noisy neighbors.

I'm not saying Trump did a perfect job. I'm saying that the U.S COVID response was a disaster, but especially so at the state and local level. If you look at how the Feds actually mobilized money and resources during the pandemic when states declared emergencies, it was a pretty decent effort. Sure, the optics Trump put on the situation were asinine. "We won't go over fifteen cases." "I won't wear a mask." etc, but that's hardly cause to blame him for everything.

well the 'optics' as you say did send a clear message to his supporters that we shouldn't worry too much, and that obviously has an influence on how those people have acted. that, in turn, has an influence on the trajectory of pandemic growth. so to dismiss it as an 'optics' problem is generous. more important tho are the facts that he had disbanded the pandemic response team and he failed to mobilize the country's response to stamp out the spread early on. how are we still having this discussion almost 2 years after the start of the crisis?

1. In February 2020, Trump tried to close our Western border to Chinese flights. Nancy Pelosi went to San Francisco and stood in the middle of a crowd saying, 'You don't need to wear masks, you don't need to be afraid, you can go out to eat.' She and her cronies shouted Trump down as a xenophobe when we knew the virus was inflicting carnage in China. So at that point the situation was painted by Trump's opposition to be, "He just hates travel, he's overreacting, etc". The Democrats were the ones spreading confusion and lax mindsets at that time. This did change months down the road, when the Dems finally got on the safety train and rode it so hard and fast that most Republicans didn't want to follow because they feared the requested measures like mass lockdowns and mask mandates were illegal. This was all compounded by different studies and doctors saying wildly different things, state authorities all taking different routes to respond, and of course people making it 10x worse by barely researching anything before going to social media and dangerously scaring their friends or convincing them it's nothing to worry about. So to say the optics during that entire multi-month fiasco weren't screwed over royally by most people at every level, and that Trump alone is solely to blame for everything, is an attack simply not historically accurate.

2. Look at the Federal response across the board after a state declared a state of emergency. They got relief supplies like PPE and ventilators moving. They sent a hospital ship to New York. They never tried to say a state couldn't impose a lockdown, mask mandate, or anything like that; it was a hands-off, 'I'll help if you ask' approach. Even then- Governor Cuomo, if you'll recall, praised Trump's help in New York state. And of course, the Fed coordinated virus research efforts via the CDC and poured resources into development of the vaccine.

So to anyone looking solely at Trump for their daily dose of fear, yeah; you got the impression that until you got a vaccine you were on your own. But that is an exceedingly narrow window through which to view the picture.

i don't find that Pelosi quote about not wearing masks. in any case, the CDC didn't recommend wearing masks until April 2020. the rest of your claims may be how you remember it unfolding, but without evidence, they're just claims. and i haven't said that i blame Trump alone, but as the man in charge, it would be hard to claim that he managed the situation well. i am saying that he managed it poorly, and he says himself that when you're in charge, you're responsible. to think that he was a tiny cog in a large machine is simply not a responsible defense.

it might be helpful to imagine that the whole crisis happened exactly as it did in every detail but supposing that Biden or Pelosi was in charge. would you defend them as you're defending Trump?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/02/24/coronavirus-speaker-house-nancy-pelosi-tours-san-franciscos-chinatown/%3famp

Happy to help you there. I don't make up lies. And like I said, I'm not saying Trump bears no responsibility. What I'm saying is that it's grossly unfair to say he bears all of it when the U.S simply doesn't have a distribution of authority that would justify such an allegation.

Yes, I would. I'm not a partisan hack. If anyone, Democrat or Republican, does something good then I'll give 'em props. If anyone, Democrat or Republican, does something bad then I'll call 'em out.

Biden, for example, deserves credit for the recent evacuation out of Afghanistan. I think he could have done it better and that huge mistakes were made, but what matters is that we got 100,000+ men women out. Money is replaceable, people are not. Under the conditions of the evacuation, Biden deserves credit for keeping people the priority.

But by the same token I won't hesitate to criticize Biden for calling Trump's travel ban xenophobic. He sacrificed his concern for people so he could score points with the anti-Trump crowd, and that was an incredibly poor decision.

that's a reasonable response. i don't agree completely tho as i see Trump as one of the two major forces behind it.

and i read that article twice and watched the video end to end, but i don't hear Nancy make that statement about not wearing masks.

It's been months since I watched the clip. If I inserted that little bit then that's on me. But the core point is that when Trump wanted to close the border, the Democrats screamed like a bunch of babies not because they actually cared, but because it let them score political points against Trump. Then, when it became evident that our healthcare system actually WASN'T up to the task of fighting COVID in a free environment, the Democrats switched to a 100% lock-it-down ethos and screamed at anyone who disagreed to any extent because, again, it let them score points as the opposition to Trump.

It's the failure to paint the situation as it happened that irks me.