Trump’s Covid Response Has Always Been Cruel and Unusual
He’s putting the recovery, the nation’s public health, and his own staff at risk
The day Donald Trump won the presidential election, I knew it would be bad: for women, for immigrants, for the poor and struggling, for people of color, for America’s security and its reputation around the world.
But I didn’t think we’d be hit with a plague. And I certainly didn’t think the president, a notorious germaphobe, would be so reckless with his own health that he would refuse to take basic precautionary measures against the virus, a negligence which would result in him first contracting it and then turning his own body into a bioweapon, loosing himself and his illness on friends and foes alike. But now that this all is happening, the story is a predictable one: The president, who has the best health care in the world, uses his vaunted platform to put millions of lives at risk by telling Americans there’s no need to worry about an infectious disease still sweeping the planet; the president, a man who holds no loyalties and seems to feel no sense of shame or empathy, knowingly puts his family, his staff, and dozens of members of his political party at immediate physical risk; and the president, never one to miss an opportunity, uses a devastating pandemic and economic collapse to…
