Trump Is Escalating His Coronavirus Lies

[babylonsister]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/trump-escalating-coronavirus-lies.html

Trump Is Escalating His Coronavirus Lies
As the death toll increases, so does his deceit.
By William Saletan
Sept 25, 2020
7:14 PM


President Donald Trump lies constantly about the coronavirus. He has falsely claimed that he banned travel from China over the objections of his advisers (they had to push him), that he rushed to suspend travel from Europe (he waited a fatal six weeks), and that he was betrayed by Chinese President Xi Jinping (he collaborated with Xi to mislead the public). But this month, as Trump faced 200,000 coronavirus deaths and the prospect of electoral defeat, he has escalated his deceit.

snip//

Trump continues to lie about hydroxychloroquine, his discredited cure for the virus. On Sunday, he told right-wing radio host Dan Bongino that experts were coming around to his view of the drug. “Doctors are loving it more than ever,” he said. “It’s very safe.” In reality, studies published shortly before the interview had found just the opposite: “no benefit of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine on the survival of COVID-19 patients,” “no benefit of hydroxychloroquine in patients affected by mild to moderate COVID-19 disease,” and “no significant reduction in mortality with HCQ use.” One study found “excess cardiovascular mortality” with long-term use. Two weeks before Trump spoke to Bongino, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had published a warning that the drug’s potential benefits in treating or preventing COVID-19 failed to outweigh its risks.

On Tuesday, another interviewer, Roop Raj of Fox 2 Detroit, asked Trump about a business executive who “wished that the country had shut down even two to three weeks” earlier than it had in mid-March. Trump told Raj that “nobody really thought to do that.” But Trump’s advisers had explicitly proposed it. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases—and a member of Trump’s coronavirus task force—had warned on Feb. 5, and for weeks thereafter, that Americans should prepare for “broader measures to mitigate the impact of the virus.” In a Feb. 25 briefing, Messonnier said “people need to start thinking about” closing schools and working from home. Trump responded by threatening to fire her. Two weeks later, he protested that even in bad flu seasons, “nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on.” He didn’t announce mitigation measures until March 16.

Trump doesn’t just misremember months-old statements or events. He lies about things immediately after they happen. “Fauci said we’ve done a fantastic job. He just said it yesterday,” Trump boasted during the ABC town hall. “He said we’ve done a fantastic job, that we didn’t mislead anybody.” But Fauci had said no such thing. In an MSNBC interview on Sept. 11, the doctor had been asked about discrepancies between Trump’s statements to Woodward and Trump’s statements to the public. Fauci explained that Trump’s public statements were false. “The president was saying it’s [the virus] going to disappear, which obviously is not the case,” Fauci observed. “When you downplay something that is really a threat, that’s not a good thing.” The doctor also shot down Trump’s line that America was “rounding the corner” on the virus. “We’re still getting up to 40,000 new infections a day and a thousand deaths,” he warned.

It’s hard to keep up with the president’s fabrications. To be “a great leader,” Trump argues, sometimes you have to be “not so honest.” But when a leader lies about a plague, people die. In this case, more than 200,000 of them.

[Iliyah]

1. He is negative, hateful, angry . . .

with nothing but lies . .

It is time for a person who will step up and be the president that is positive and loving for the people of the United States of America.

[pwb]

2. Empty words repeated over and over.

So sick.

[TeamPooka]

3. Come on virus, Trump is right there! What are you waiting for? sheesh.

[Caliman73]

4. Trump knows NOTHING about leadership.

He has a fantasy in his mind about being a great leader, but has never been a leader of anything in his life.

Leaders are honest with their followers. Certainly they are discrete and they don't dump out everything in a verbal diarrhea like Trump does. You have to be able to trust a leader so if a leader lies, that trust is broken.

I will say it again, He is an idiot.

[Celerity]

5. shithole is as shithole does