Did Trump Calculate The Cost Of 200,000 American Lives In Terms Of Paper Growth On Wall Street?

At least 100 times in the last couple of years, I started a post with something like "well, now he's really lost his mind." I find myself having to stop doing that and changing it to something else-- as I'm doing right now. I mean how many times can you say that? And I almost did it again yesterday when I saw this tweet. Doesn't anyone tell him-- John Pavlovitz aside-- that he sounds like a drug-addled madman?

As Glenn Kessler noted in the Washington Post, if Trump's trying to not spark panic, what's his reelection campaign based on? And it doesn't stop there. In the tweet above the drug-addled madman chastises Woodward for not exposing him earlier. Anyone in the country can make that argument... except one obese, orange-hued psychopath. The Post's Margaret Sullivan reported that "Woodward said his aim was to provide a fuller context than could occur in a news story: 'I knew I could tell the second draft of history, and I knew I could tell it before the election.' (Former Washington Post publisher Phil Graham famously called journalism 'the first rough draft of history.') What’s more, he said, there were at least two problems with what he heard from Trump in February that kept him from putting it in the newspaper at the time: First, he didn’t know what the source of Trump’s information was. It wasn’t until months later-- in May-- that Woodward learned it came from a high-level intelligence briefing in January that was also described in Wednesday’s reporting about the book. In February, what Trump told Woodward seemed hard to make sense of, the author told me-- back then, Woodward said, there was no panic over the virus; even toward the final days of that month, Anthony S. Fauci was publicly assuring Americans there was no need to change their daily habits. Second, Woodward said, 'the biggest problem I had, which is always a problem with Trump, is I didn’t know if it was true.'... But why not then write such a story later in the spring, once it was clear that the virus was extraordinarily destructive and that Trump’s early downplaying had almost certainly cost lives? Again, Woodward said he believes his highest purpose isn’t to write daily stories but to give his readers the big picture-- one that may have a greater effect, especially with a consequential election looming. Woodward’s effort, he said, was to deliver in book form 'the best obtainable version of the truth,' not to rush individual revelations into publication. And always with a particular deadline in mind, so that people could read, absorb, and make their judgments well before November 3. 'The demarcation is the election.'"

So the Regime is now trying to persuade whatever is left of Trump's moron base that it is Woodward who caused the deaths of 200,000 Americans, not Trump. Kessler began his article with Trump's quote from Wednesday: "I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic." Presumably he wasn't thinking of panic on the streets of London, Birmingham, Carlisle, Dublin, Dundee, Humberside or Leeds as much as panic on the floor of the New York stock exchange.

Who is going to fall for the new Trump trope that "he was trying to keep the nation calm by not revealing how much he knew about the dangerous nature of the novel coronavirus?" Kessler:

A cynic might suggest that Trump wanted to keep things calm because he was concerned that a plunging stock market would harm his chances for reelection. But let’s lay that aside for the moment and consider Trump’s explanation that he does not want to create panic.

That might be news to the President Trump running for reelection. His YouTube video channel is filled with apocalyptic images of violence, economic despair and disaster. So are the president’s speeches and news availabilities, including at the same venue where he said he did not want to create panic.

Here’s a sampling, drawn mainly from our database of Trump’s false and misleading claims:

“Radical justices will erase the Second Amendment, silence political speech and require taxpayers to fund extreme late-term abortion. They will give unelected bureaucrats the power to destroy millions of American jobs. They will remove the words ‘under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance. They will unilaterally declare the death penalty unconstitutional, even for the most depraved mass murderers. They will erase national borders, cripple police departments and grant new protections to anarchists, rioters, violent criminals and terrorists.”
— Sept. 9

“Joe Biden and the radical, socialist Democrats would immediately collapse the economy. If they got in, they would collapse it. You’ll have a crash the likes of which you’ve never seen before. Your stocks, your 401(k)s.”
— Sept. 7

“Biden wants to surrender our country to the virus, he wants to surrender our families to the violent left-wing mob, and he wants to surrender our jobs to China-- our jobs and our economic well-being.”
— Sept. 7

“Biden’s strategy is to surrender to the left-wing mob, which is exactly what he’s doing-- I don’t think he even knows what he’s doing-- and give them control over every lever of power in the United States government. But when you surrender to the mob, you don’t get freedom; you get fascism. That’s what happens in all cases. You take a look at Venezuela. Look what-- look what’s going on there and other places.”
— Aug. 31

“Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.”
— July 4

“In Joe Biden’s America, rioters, looters and criminal aliens have more rights than law-abiding citizens, and that’s true.”
— June 20

“The entire Democratic field supports deadly sanctuary cities, which release dangerous criminals to terrorize your communities right here in North Carolina, believe it or not.”
— March 2

“Every major Democrat running for president has pledged to eliminate gas-powered automobiles and destroy the U.S. auto industry forever.”
— Dec. 18

Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, pinned a tweet back in early March. I'm sure Tweeter-in-Chief, for whom Twitter is a one-way street, never read it:

This week Hanage decided to use a Twitter thread to make some comments about it and Trump's claims about why he lied about the pandemic. "In an emergency, it is reasonable and responsible to minimize panic. However this is not done by denying the existence of the emergency-- at best that delays the panic and at worst it magnifies the panic once the truth becomes clear. Instead earn trust. Honestly present the reality of the situation and reassure people that you are working to control it and minimize the fallout. Work with expert risk communicators. When it comes to preparing, listen to experts who know more than you. Use whatever time you have to collect the resources people will need-- remember their safety is your responsibility. Be responsive. Recognize that mistakes will be made and learn from them. Don't be distracted. Support those who are suffering and those who are working to minimize suffering. Know that it is a marathon, not a sprint. Failing to prepare for a real threat is not responsible. Playing down a real risk that you know is real is not preventing panic. It's negligence."