There are some things that have remained consistent since the coronavirus hit: Jeezy is still rapping about drugs despite being a grown-ass man in a serious grown-ass man relationship with the Asian girl from The Real or The Talk or The View. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz has continued to unite the world with his idiocy, and Draya Michele still shuts social media down with her swimsuit photos.
And the president of the United States will continue to downplay the impact of the coronavirus to save the economy while people die.
On Thursday, during an afternoon briefing, the president touted all the successes he believed he’s had since the coronavirus outbreak began ravaging America, while simultaneously ignoring the fact that while he was patting himself on the back, he was ignoring hospital workers wearing garbage bags as protective gear and the United States overtaking both Italy and China for having the most confirmed cases of coronavirus.
And he did all of this while still pushing his Easter (April 12) timeline of lifting restrictions—while one of his top coronavirus task force members, Dr. Anthony Faucci, was like, “What, bitch?! The virus sets the timeline, not your dumb ass!”
From CNN:
All the evidence of the virus’s advance, seen in rising death tolls and infection figures, suggests the situation is getting worse and that normal life could be weeks or months away. Once, Trump minimized the looming impact of the crisis. Now his assessments conflict with the reality of its deadly march.
On Thursday, a day that saw more reported deaths from Covid-19 than ever before in the United States — Trump bizarrely turned the focus to what he said was a far lower mortality rate than he had expected.
A week ago, there were a total of 8,800 confirmed infections in the United States and 149 deaths. On Thursday, that figure reached more than 82,000 with nearly 1,200 deaths. Were those figures the result of a hurricane or a terrorist attack, their human toll would be more obvious, and it would be more difficult for the President to spin the situation. But as people die unseen in hospital wards and emergency rooms, the emotional impact of the accelerating tragedy is less obvious than it would be during a natural disaster.
While the data is telling the truth, that didn’t stop Trump from painting himself into a liar’s corner.
Trump is still acting as if the U.S. has a handle on coronavirus. He’s still holding press briefings around his hunches and dreams. While the United States is now the epicenter for the coronavirus, Trump hoped that the nightmare wouldn’t last “much longer” despite all reports saying that it’s going to get much worse.
And Trump’s ignoring it all, much as he has done everything in his life, to continue to push his own narrative because what Trump really cares about is stabilizing the economy even at the cost of American lives.
If Trump were the captain on the Titanic, he would have been praising his skills as the head of the ship while blaming the crew for not notifying him earlier. He would have found the one crew member who wanted to be captain and used him as an example as someone who’s bad-mouthing him because he secretly wants his job, and as water spilled onto the gigantic vessel, he would’ve been talking about how he’s looking forward to hosting his next charter.
These are extraordinary times we are living in, but the man running the show, the one tasked with keeping it all together, is just a regular old liar who can’t hide his true allegiance to money to stop lying long enough to tell the American public just how fucked we all are.