Many people observe Trump and ridicule him as being stupid, semi incoherent, incomprehensible, an idiot, a narcissist etc etc, especially since covid 19 death toll approaches 100,000. And I don't argue with them and have described him as an imbecile more than once.
But are these deaths the result of a deliberate policy ? Is Trump far more calculating, and sinister than most people imagine ?
I don't think Trump was fooled by "Chinese lies" or "stupidly did nothing" until it was to late. I think he was fully informed as to the likely death toll and deliberately did nothing about it and covered it up as long as possible. It wasn't a mistake it was a deliberate policy. . .
"On Wednesday, researchers from Columbia University released a study showing that the massive US death toll, now approaching 100,000, is a direct consequence of decisions made by the Trump administration.The study, posted on medRxiv.org, found that if the United States had begun social distancing and other control measures just two weeks earlier, it would have saved the lives of 54,000 people."
"These figures quantify the consequences of the Trump administration’s efforts in January and February to minimize the threat posed by the pandemic. Despite clear evidence and warnings by scientists, Trump and his cabinet members systematically downplayed the significance of the disease."
"Leading scientists had been ringing the alarm for nearly two months in a futile attempt to make the White House take the most basic measures to prepare for a major pandemic."
Driving the White House’s response to the pandemic from the beginning was not the threat of COVID-19 to human lives, but its impact on the stock market. Any signal that the US was bracing for a pandemic—including taking actual steps to prepare for it—was discouraged. The Financial Times quoted one person close to the White House as saying, “Jared [Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law] had been arguing that testing too many people, or ordering too many ventilators, would spook the markets and so we just shouldn’t do it.”
Trump was prepared to let tens of thousands of Americans die so the Fed and Treasury had time to create the framework for a multitrillion-dollar bailout of the financial system and the funneling of hundreds of billions of dollars into major corporations from the Treasury.
