Trump lied, people died…
That sign is ubiquitous at civil-rights marches and other rallies. But the sign is more than a clever slogan. It’s a four-word essay reflecting reality. Some people have excoriated me because I have characterized Donald Trump as racist and evil, and they have challenged me to provide proof of my assertions. This blog is my response. To keep this to readable length, I’ll just focus on a few irrefutable instances of outright Trumpian evil and racism.
But first some foundational facts…
As I write this, there are 6,462,268 Covid-19 cases and 194,138 Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. Both of these numbers increase daily. The overwhelming majority of these cases and deaths were preventable, according to medical experts.
Donald Trump is a profligate, inveterate liar. The Washington Post has documented over 19,000 Trump lies. Cataloguing and responding to Trump’s lies would be a book-length project. Ditto, re: cataloguing and addressing all the racist and evil aspects of Trump’s utterances and actions. As is described below, people die as a result of Trump’s lies.
Trump knew in early February just how deadly the Covid-19 coronavirus was.
Between December 2019 and late July 2020, legendary journalist Bob Woodward—he and Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate story in 1972—conducted 18 tape-recorded interviews with Trump for his book, “Rage.” In those interviews Trump admitted that in early February, 2020, he was warned about the coronavirus by Chinese President Xi Jinping (whom Trump now vociferously blames for “sending” the coronavirus to the U.S.). The interview tape recordings reveal that:
* Trump knew in early February how dangerous and deadly the Covid-19 coronavirus was. His exact words: “This (the coronavirus) is deadly stuff” …
* Trump knew the coronavirus was airborne (i.e., spread via the air) …
* Trump knew that the coronavirus affected children and young people …
* Trump knew the coronavirus was five times more deadly than the seasonal flu …
* Trump purposely downplayed the coronavirus and its effects. Trump’s exact words: “I wanted to always play it down” … “I still like playing it down…”
Even after knowing the above, Trump purposely misled—i.e., lied to—the American people about the coronavirus. At rallies, press conferences and elsewhere, Trump repeatedly said that the coronavirus was not serious, that it would “go away,” “disappear,” by April. At a Feb. 28 rally, Trump equated COVID-19 with the common flu and said that the coronavirus was a Democratic “hoax.”
Homicidal negligence…
54,000 lives would have been saved if Trump had declared a national emergency two weeks earlier than he did.
It was not until March 13 that Trump declared the coronavirus to be a national emergency. Medical experts maintain that if Trump had taken that action a week earlier, 32,000 lives would have been saved and that 54,000 lives would have been saved if Trump had declared a national emergency two weeks earlier.
Even after declaring the coronavirus to be a national emergency, Trump did not develop a national plan, nor did he coordinate a system of supplying Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to the states. Instead, he told the states that they were on their own, forcing them to compete with each other as they scrambled to obtain PPE.
In direct contravention of known facts and his medical advisers’ pleas (and those of the medical community in general), Trump:
* discouraged people from wearing masks by mocking people who wore masks …
* ignored the advice and warning of medical experts and scientists (e.g., holding rallies with no social distancing and not requiring masks, thereby putting the public at risk) …
* pressured governors to do things he knew were dangerous (open bars, etc.) …
* said that children and young people were immune to the coronavirus …
In April, even as he began to urge the country to reopen, Trump told Woodward that the virus “(is) so easily transmissible, you wouldn’t even believe it.” There’s much more, but the above make the point: Trump lied to the country about the coronavirus and the harm it could do.
Tens of thousands of people died due to Trump’s lies and related actions, as well as his inaction. Woodward’s Watergate reporting partner Carl Bernstein called the Trump interview tapes the “smoking gun” of “homicidal negligence.”
Propounding lies that you know will hurt and even kill people in order to score political points is evil, pure and simple.
Snatching children from their parents is evil…
Trump’s administration has torn over 5,000 children from their parents and jailed them in cages.
Trump’s administration has torn over 5,000 children from their parents and jailed them in cages, depriving them of basic necessities such as blankets. Exacerbating the trauma of being forcibly separated from their parents, some (many?) of these children and youngsters have been subjected to physical and sexual abuse by staff members of the quasi-prisons they were herded into. This is not speculation. Several of the perpetrators were taken to court, prosecuted, and convicted. At least six of these children have died.
The separation of the children from their parents will in many cases be permanent since there was no mechanism to reunite the families, indicating there never was any intent to reconcile the families. This child-parent separation policy was done solely to score political points for Trump.
There are no words to describe the depth of evilness in these Trump actions.
As to the racist part…
The “Central Park 5”…
In 1989, Donald Trump took out a full-page ad in New York newspapers calling for the execution of five black and Latino young men (the “Central Park 5”) accused of a brutal rape of a white jogger in Central Park. The men had not even gone to trial yet when Trump demanded that they be executed. In the ad Trump said that people who kill should be executed even though the men were not charged with murder.
The five men were exonerated when DNA evidence proved that another man committed the crime. Moreover, this man confessed. Insisting that innocent people be executed is essentially calling for their murder.
After the five black and Latino young men were exonerated, Trump said he had no regrets for calling for their murder and refused to apologize. When New York City reached a settlement with the five men in 2014, Trump published an op-ed in a New York newspaper, calling the settlement a “disgrace.”
Compare the above with Trump’s complete and deafening silence regarding white supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof, who killed nine black church members during a Bible study session in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015.
Obviously, Trump’s attitude toward innocent black and brown people accused of a crime against a white person and his attitude toward white folks who callously murder black people is color coded.
The cesspool of “birtherism”…
For five years Trump pursued—on television, on social media—the right-wing conspiracy theory that Obama had been born in Kenya.
Trump’s wallowing in the cesspool of the “Birther” movement that questioned President Barak Obama’s citizenship and legitimacy as an American does not need any elaboration. That was a racist movement on its face.
For five years Trump pursued—on television, on social media—the right-wing conspiracy theory that Obama had been born in Kenya and therefore was an illegitimate U.S. president. In 2014, Trump went so far as to invite hackers to (illegally) hack Obama’s college records and check what was listed as his place of birth. It was not until 2016 that he finally acknowledged that Obama was born in the U.S. And in true Trumpian style, he did not take responsibility for his actions—he falsely claimed that Hillary Clinton started the birther movement.
But Trump was not done with “birthing.” In 2017 Trump pardoned his fellow “birther,” Joe Arpaio, the most racist Sheriff in America, who was convicted of running a racial-profiling campaign against people who looked like Mexicans and who on national television boasted that he was “honored” to be compared to the KKK.
Even now, in 2020, Trump promoted a lie that Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris, who was born in Oakland, California, is not a U.S. citizen and therefore ineligible to be vice president because her parents are immigrants.
Trump inspires “Mexican hunting”…
In 2019 a white nationalist domestic terrorist, inspired by Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric killed 23 people in an El Paso.
In 2018, Trump was actively fomenting hate against Mexicans and other brown people by spreading the lie that the U.S. was being “invaded” by hundreds of thousands of people coming through Mexico. These “invaders,” said Trump, were drug dealers, human traffickers, and all manner of criminals who would overwhelm our schools, overcrowd our hospitals, drain our welfare system, and cause untold amounts of crime. Trump’s and his supporters’ rantings fomented a culture of hate and fear of immigrants, particularly Mexicans and Central Americans.
In 2019 a white nationalist domestic terrorist, inspired by Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric, went out “Mexican hunting” and killed 23 people in an El Paso Walmart. He told police he went to El Paso specifically to kill Mexicans and posted an online manifesto stating he wanted to stop the “Hispanic invasion” of the U.S. Besides murdering 23 people, the domestic terrorist wounded 24 others.
I rest my case. Donald J. Trump is evil, and he is a racist. c/s
______________________________________________________
Copyright 2020 by Salomon Baldenegro. To contact Sal write: Salomonrb@msn.com Photo of El Paso shrine copyrighted by Maria Natividad. All other images in the public domain.