HantaPrez

Yes, Donald Trump has experience with a pandemic

One of the many disqualifiers that should have prevented Donald Trump from becoming president again, and this one's near the top of the list, is the way he handled the coronavirus pandemic.

When the pandemic hit our nation, Donald Trump should have been a leader. He should've been on the front lines in the response to the pandemic. He should have been telling the nation to follow the guidelines, even if they were changing as we learned more about the virus, and he should've been following them himself as an example. He should have been active in making sure that every state received the medical supplies it needed to save lives.

Instead, Donald Trump tried to ignore the emerging pandemic. When the virus hit our shore, he tried to downplay it, which he admitted to Bob Woodward in a phone call. After 15 people had been killed by the virus, he claimed it was over. Shortly after that, he said it would disappear quickly. Soon, he politicized it. Later, he promoted bogus solutions to the virus, such as ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and yes, even bleach, as at a White House press briefing, he speculated publicly about injecting disinfectant into the body.

At the start of the pandemic, Trump discouraged wearing face masks.

Instead of following health guidelines to avoid catching COVID-19, Trump held a huge party to celebrate his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, a seat they were stealing, but that's a gripe for another time. Naturally, Donald Trump caught COVID-19 and, in fear for his life, went to the hospital, where he remained for several days.

After surviving his bout with COVID-19, Trump allowed his base to villainize Dr. Anthony Fauci, who had dedicated his life to being a public servant and protecting America from viruses, such as COVID-19. After a vaccine was developed against COVID-19, Trump was one of the first to be vaccinated, but unlike President Joe Biden, he wouldn't allow any photos to be released of him receiving the vaccine, as most of his base was too busy spreading lies and conspiracy theories about it. They were also busy contracting the virus and spreading it, that is, when they weren't too busy dying from it.

From the American Presidency Project:

From the outset, Donald Trump has bungled our response to the coronavirus, leaving America with the worst outbreak in the world, with over 175,000 people dead, five million infected, and our economy reeling.

• New York Times, 8/6/20: “one country stands alone, as the only affluent nation to have suffered a severe, sustained outbreak for more than four months: the United States.”

Instead of listening to warnings from Vice President Biden and public health experts, Trump praised the Chinese government’s response and mindlessly parroted their propaganda — failing to prepare America to deal with the virus.

• Washington Post, 3/20/20: “Trump’s insistence on the contrary seemed to rest in his relationship with China’s President Xi Jinping, whom Trump believed was providing him with reliable information about how the virus was spreading in China, despite reports from intelligence agencies that Chinese officials were not being candid about the true scale of the crisis.”

• New York Times, 4/11/2020: “Throughout January, as Mr. Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action.”

• POLITICO, 4/15/20: “Trump, however, echoed many of those same assurances regarding China and its response to the virus throughout January and February, as the unique coronavirus began to infiltrate countries around the world. Just days before the U.S. recorded its first death from Covid-19, Trump touted China’s government for its transparency and hard work to defeat the coronavirus that causes the illness.”

As COVID-19 swept across our country, Trump bungled testing, leaving us with persistent shortages and delays even now. And, Trump inexcusably failed to get protective equipment to the heroes on the front lines of this fight, opting to side with corporate lobbyists instead of heeding Vice President Biden’s call to fully invoke the Defense Production Act to mobilize our economy to fight the virus.

• New York Times, 3/28/20: “As the deadly virus spread from China with ferocity across the United States between late January and early March, large-scale testing of people who might have been infected did not happen — because of technical flaws, regulatory hurdles, business-as-usual bureaucracies and lack of leadership at multiple levels.”

• New York Times, 7/6/20: “In recent weeks, as cases have surged in many states, the demand for testing has soared, surpassing capacity and creating a new testing crisis.”

• Washington Post, 7/8/20: “Health-care workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic are encountering shortages of masks, gowns, face shields and gloves — a frustrating recurrence of a struggle that haunted the first months of the crisis.”

• CNN, 7/14/20: “Trump administration’s delayed use of 1950s law leads to critical supplies shortages”

As the crisis mounted, Trump’s failure to effectively lead undercut our response to the pandemic at every turn and cost Americans their lives.

• POLITICO, 3/7/20: “For six weeks behind the scenes, and now increasingly in public, Trump has undermined his administration’s own efforts to fight the coronavirus outbreak — resisting attempts to plan for worst-case scenarios, overturning a public-health plan upon request from political allies and repeating only the warnings that he chose to hear.

• Washington Post, 4/4/20: “It may never be known how many thousands of deaths, or millions of infections, might have been prevented with a response that was more coherent, urgent and effective. But even now, there are many indications that the administration’s handling of the crisis had potentially devastating consequences.”

• NBC News, 3/14/20: “An examination of how the Trump administration responded to the coronavirus outbreak that was first documented in December reveals a story of missed opportunities, mismanagement and a president who resisted the advice of experts urging a more aggressive response.”

Even after months of abject failure on COVID-19, Trump still refuses to take the threat seriously, repeatedly claiming that it will simply “disappear” even as he and his allies attack public health officials and undermine the basic measures we need to control the virus.

• POLITICO, 8/1/2020: “President Donald Trump publicly rebuked Dr. Anthony Fauci on Saturday, forcefully rejecting the nation’s top infectious disease expert’s testimony on why the U.S. has experienced a renewed surge in coronavirus cases.”

Trump even used the virus to promote his racism, as he called it the “Chinese virus.”

We will never know how many hundreds of thousands of pointless deaths there were from this virus because of Donald Trump botching the response to it. His response to it was reason enough for us not to return America's worst president to the White House.

As proof that Donald Trump is not qualified to deal with health matters, he made a political deal with Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine skeptic, and appointed him as our Secretary of Health. He also installed Dr. Emmett Oz into his administration, a man who, like Trump, has pushed bogus medicinal cures.

I don’t believe the hantavirus is going to be another international pandemic, killing millions of people, but just in case, I’m buying toilet paper before the supply chain cuts us off.

I got this comment on my Facebook page today on this cartoon. Trumpers get very touchy when you bring up the bleach incident.

The poster, a Mr. Jim Garoutte, immediately blocked me after leaving this comment. It's like someone's sneaking behind you, slapping you in the back of the head, and then running away because they're a coward. As you can see, I didn't know it was there until 43 minutes after it was created.

I don't care if the man blocked me because, from this comment, he's not the type of person I want to engage with. But I have questions. How can a person be a “retarded libtard?” Isn't this redundant? Please excuse my use of the word “retard,” but I'm trying to understand a MAGAt here. Instead of being a “retarded libtard,” wouldn’t I just be a retarded liberal? I'm called a “libtard” on a near-daily basis, but “retarded libard” is a first for me.

Creative note: This idea came to me very quickly as I was watching CNN yesterday. This was while I was planning to draw a cartoon on Kash Patel, so I saved it for today. This is also the first of two cartoons I drew today, and I finished this before 2 PM. The second cartoon is for the Fredericksburg Advance, and you will see it tomorrow.

Remarkably Bright Creatures: I'm going to start recommending movies and TV shows occasionally. I don't get out much since my stroke, so I'm usually watching something in the evenings. I don't expect people to watch what I recommend, as you may have different tastes, and maybe you won't even read these.

As I sat down for dinner last night, I opened Netflix to see what I wanted to watch during dinner. One of the first films that I came across was Remarkably Bright Creatures, which is something I had not heard of before. I did not even watch the trailer, as the description of the movie intrigued me enough. It stars Sally Field, who plays a cleaning lady at an aquarium and has a bit of a relationship with an octopus. It's not as weird as I just described it. Alfred Molina, who played Dr. Octopus in a Spider-Man movie, voices Marcellus, the octopus, in this movie.

It's a very sweet film that is a mystery, yet you may not realize you are watching a mystery until it's revealed. It’s a film about loss, aging, connecting, and Radiohead. At the end, I teared up a little. And while Marcellus narrates some of the film, it's not about a talking octopus.

If you do watch this movie or if you have already seen it, let me know in the comments what you think. Don't post any spoilers.

Drawn in 30 seconds:

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