Note from the columnist: This column is based mostly on Seth Abrahamson’s “Proof of Corruption: Bribery, Impeachment, and Pandemic in the Age of Trump,” which contains 3,250 end notes comprising 5,000 citations and requiring more than 300 pages in print. The book printed on paper and bound comprises 501 pages.
As of April 12, the United States has suffered 1,128,404 COVID-19 deaths, yet millions of voters are clamoring to cast ballots to reelect the man primarily responsible for such high numbers come 2024.
In a recent interview, Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said 130 Americans are dying of COVID-19 each day. If that rate continues to year’s end, we can expect a total of 47,450 COVID-19 deaths in 2023. That would put our COVID-long mortality near 2 million people.
Then President Donald Trump’s egregious mishandling of the pandemic can and should be blamed for a large portion of those deaths.
In 2020 Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed he didn’t act more quickly to the outbreak because “ … nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion … nobody ever thought of numbers like this.”
His statement would number among thousands of lies that Trump has told on his first campaign trail, during his presidency, and now as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.
Studies have documented more than 30,000 lies or misleading claims just during his presidency. And Trump was given an overly generous benefit of doubt in labeling many of the lies as inaccurate claims.
To wit: Trump has repeatedly claimed that he was responsible for the greatest economy in history. More economic growth occurred in the presidencies of Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton.
In context, Trump flat-out lies, especially after having been informed of the truth.
Citizens who hunger and thirst for Trump’s lies have what psychologists call the illusionary truth effect, the tendency to believe false information after its repeated exposure.
Trump has this down pat. His is a virtuoso performance.
Now, as to his claims that no one knew that a major pandemic was in the offing, there is concrete evidence that he lies.
Between January and August 2019, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services ran the Crimson Contagion code on the virus first discovered in China. Scientists wrote in a report that the simulation provided data that the virus could spread very rapidly and produce 110 million infections, 7.7 million hospitalizations and 586,000 fatalities.
Additionally, Trump also ignored a 69-page 2016 National Security Council document that was essentially a “playbook” for responding to a major respiratory pandemic, including a step-by-step list of priorities.
In April 2018, Trump fired his homeland security advisor, who had called for a “comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics.” Weeks later, Trump fired his health security team director, Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer, and disbanded his entire unit.
Trump was still denying the seriousness of the pandemic in January 2020 when he rejected his own White House chief of staff warning that the pandemic could cost him his reelection.
Also in January 2020, Trump rejected a company’s offer to make an additional 1.7 million masks a month by pigeonholing the request.
Abramson had 500 pages to fill, but my word limit is just about up, so just one more example of Trumpian COVID-19 lies.
Trump claims that he quickly shut down the entry of people to the United States if they flew in from China. Thirty-eight countries restricted travel before Trump did.
What’s more, Trump’s shutdown of travel from China was riddled with holes. Big enough holes for 40,000 passengers on flights from China between Feb. 3 and April 7, 2020. Trump described that as a “small number,” and screening was “spotty,” the New York Times reported.
There is reasonable hope, however, that the electorate is waking up. Recent polls show that in another Biden/Trump runoff, Biden will administer a coup de grace.
The big IF, however, is whether Trump supporters can or will slake their appetite for the illusionary truth effect.
Day has lived in Pullman since 1972. He served on the Washington State University faculty for 32 years as a science communicator, retiring in 2004. His readings are peripatetic in agriculture, biography, current events, history, law, politics, psychology, religion, science and sociology.
