Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead
Donald Trump disembarks Air Force One upon his arrival to Reading Regional Airport in Reading, Pa., on Saturday, Oct. 31, 2020.
The Donald Trump Re-Election Death Tour will go down in American political history as the deadliest, most reckless and irresponsible presidential campaign ever to take place. Wisconsin and other states in the upper Midwest have the enormous misfortune to be key election battlegrounds at the same time the region has become the epicenter of the deadliest wave yet of the COVID-19 pandemic Trump has failed to control for nine months, setting new daily records for infections and hospitalizations.
It’s the worst possible time for Trump to pack together thousands of maskless supporters shouting insults at Democrats at multiple Wisconsin rallies during a surging tidal wave of disease that could double the world’s worst U.S. death toll of 230,000 within two months. We once assumed Trump held such rallies out of ignorance. But journalist Bob Woodward revealed Trump knew from the very beginning how devastating coronavirus really was. He intentionally lied to America because he had no national strategy to combat it. Americans were on their own to figure out how not to die. Unfortunately, supporters are still attending his rallies unprotected because they believe his lies.
And Trump has a brand-new whopper for them that’s even more unconscionable. Get this: Their heroic president has already ended the pandemic. You read that right. It’s all over. Greedy doctors and nurses are lying when they say Americans are still dying from COVID-19 because they make more money when people die from COVID. Trump has even made up the imaginary cash bonus doctors receive for each fabricated death—$2,000.
It’s not just incredibly irresponsible for Trump to claim anyone who contracts a deadly disease will immediately get better like he did. But what kind of horrible human being tells preposterous lies to try to shift the blame for his own political failure onto doctors and nurses who risk their own lives working long hours every day trying to save a seemingly endless wave of humanity in a deadly pandemic? At the end of September, the union National Nurses United reported more than 1,700 doctors, nurses and health care workers had died in the pandemic, many working without adequate personal protective equipment.
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Callous Disregard for Life
Trump’s callous disregard for the lives of anyone who publicly disagrees with him can be even more dangerous than his total lack of concern for the lives of those who attend his rallies. Trump has repeatedly refused to disavow public support from well-armed, violent extremists and he even eggs them on. That can add real physical danger for anyone Trump publicly attacks.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s leading expert on infectious diseases, revealed on “60 Minutes” that since Trump turned against his advice Fauci has required near-constant security because of serious threats against him and his family. Fauci said it was sad “a public health message to save lives triggers such venom and animosity that it results in real and credible threats to my life and my safety.”
Just a week after the FBI charged 13 extremists with plotting to kidnap and execute Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and storm the Lansing capitol to take hostages, Trump held a rally attacking Whitmer in Muskegon, Mich., prompting the crowd to chant “Lock her up!” Trump agreed: “Lock ‘em all up!” All Democrats? Whitmer responded on Twitter, “This is exactly the rhetoric that has put me, my family and other government officials’ lives in danger while we try to save the lives of our fellow Americans. It needs to stop.”
Instead of promoting his re-election, Trump’s dangerous “super spreader” rallies also spreading more than 50 lies a day, according to Washington Post fact checkers, are clear demonstrations to intelligent voters why Trump should never have been elected in the first place. Many of Trump’s advisors probably know this. The primary reason for the rallies is Trump thrives on the public adulation.
I re-watched A Face in the Crowd the other night. It’s a terrific film about Trump’s presidency even though it was released in 1957 when Trump was 11 years old. Elia Kazan directed the script by Budd Schulberg after they collaborated on another great film, On the Waterfront with Marlon Brando. A Face in the Crowd features another outstanding performance from its star who, believe it or not, was Andy Griffith, pre-Mayberry. Griffith plays a country singer named Lonesome Rhoades. He becomes a TV star and achieves national political power by pretending to care about ordinary Americans while actually holding them in total contempt as ignorant hicks.
Film critics should never give away plot twists so I won’t describe Lonesome’s fall. But a broken lunatic is left raving in the night shouting for his last remaining friend to crank up the fake applause machine to produce the public adulation he still desperately craves. May we all soon experience our own happy Hollywood ending to the worst presidency in American history.
To read more Taking Liberties columns by Joel McNally, click here.
