Sympathy for the Donald in the age of Trumpery
by Ranting Panda, 10 October 2020
When Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19, his gullible and deluded supporters expected the world to have sympathy for him. They were surprised and upset that few people cared about the health of their feckless leader.
Perhaps there would have been more sympathy for Trump if he wasn't a fascist pig who corrupted American democracy, the rule of law and is directly responsible for the deaths of more than 210,000 Americans from COVID-19. The biggest damage of Trump's lack of leadership has been his failure to act on COVID-19, claiming it was a hoax, understating its severity, and promoting quack cures for it. A Cornell University study found Trump to be the single biggest driver of misinformation about the pandemic (Stolberg & Weiland 2020). More than 210,000 people are dead as a result. This pathetic excuse for a human, played partisan politics as people died by refusing to distribute personal protective equipment or increase testing in Democrat-led states, which enabled Trump to blame Democratic Governors for the virus (Sykes 2020). The Whitehouse blockaded PPE from states unless they swore allegiance to Trump. Trump even refused to increase testing for the virus because of his childish logic that 'When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people' (Sykes 2020).
He constantly calls Covid the 'China Virus', but for Americans, it is the Trump Virus'.
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| Time Magazine cover - 19 October 2020 edition |
The United States accounts for 4% of the world's population, but more than 20% of COVID-19 cases and 20% of deaths globally.
In 2018 Trump scrapped the pandemic response team that Obama had established. Obama had previously stated that it was just a matter of time before America faced a pandemic, which would be its greatest threat. Trump, in his typical ignorant stupidity and hatred of Obama, axed the program. A program that could have greatly reduced the death toll from COVID-19. 210,000 people dead and we're supposed to feel sympathy because Trump has contracted the very virus that he claimed was a Democratic Party election hoax.
Trump ridiculed a reporter's disability and mocked Hilary Clinton when she suffered pneumonia in 2016, so it's a bit lame that Trump's supporters are demanding sympathy for this narcissistic buffoon (Fisher 2020). Just a few days before being diagnosed with COVID-19, Trump was mocking Joe Biden for wearing masks. Is it any wonder that people have little sympathy for Trump. He is a victim of his own stupidity ... he might recover, but sadly it's too late for the more than 210,000 Americans who died from COVID-19, even as Trump continued mocking the disease and its victims.
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| Time.com - 9 October 2020 |
When it came to immigrant families crossing the border into the US, Trump had children torn from the arms of their parents and held in cages. His pathetic, gold-digging wife, Melania, has repeatedly stated that she doesn't care about the children. This much is obvious from them both. In typical Trump fashion, he blamed Obama for the policy of family separations, however, it was yet one more Trumpian lie (Valverde 2019). The only time that children were separated from their families under Obama, was if the child was in danger. Obama's policy was to keep families together.
Melania, a gold-digging migrant from Slovenia, was caught on tape mocking the very children her husband tore from their families because they dared to want a better life free from poverty and violence. One would think that Melania, being a migrant who wanted a better, would be more sympathetic. Her narcissism is on par with her husband's, so when reporters dared to ask her about the children rather than herself, she cracked with the retort: 'They said, "Oh, what about the children that were separated?" Give me a fucking break' (Pappenfuss 2020).
Many of Trump's supporters claim that they are pro-life and pro-family, while Trump destroys families and is incompetent on a genocidal scale. (Did I mention more than 210,000 dead). Don the Con's incompetence & corruption are on a genocidal scale, so how about sympathy for his victims, and let's stop this narcissistic conman from killing any more.
Then there's the little matter of the treatment that Trump received for COVID-19. The experimental drug had been tested using cells from an abortion (Regalado 2020). Abortions don't mean anything to Trump when it comes to his own health ... they're just collateral damage.
Trump destroys everything he touches. He inherited billions from his father and yet is more than $300 million in debt (Weber 2020). He refused to release his tax returns when elected, unlike every other president in the modern era. When the New York Times exposed his tax returns, we could see why. It revealed a history of business failure and tax avoidance. He payed no tax in 10 of the 15 years between 2000 and 2015, and just $750 in tax in 2016 (ABC News 2020). He is currently being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service over his tax, with an estimate that he could be responsible for a tax bill exceeding $100 million. This is a man who boasts that he doesn't draw a salary as president. Why would he? He has been fleecing the American tax system for years. Then there's the costs of his golf trips. These are estimated to have cost the American people over $130 million (Date 2020). So Trump not claiming the $400,000 per year presidential salary means nothing when his golf trips alone have cost more than 325 years of presidential salary. He criticised Obama's golf trips and swore he wouldn't spend a day on the golf course. At the same point in their presidency, Obama had spent 96 days golfing, whereas Trump had spent 266 (Dale & Lybrand 2020). Given the number of days he's absent from the job, Trump isn't the Commander in Chief, he is the Thief in Chief.
Trump has destroyed democracy in the US by subverting democratic processes, such as appointing Ruth Bader Ginsburg's replacement to the Supreme Court weeks before the election. He has falsely claimed that the mail voting process is corrupt and is already casting doubt on the validity of the election outcome. He has hinted that if he loses the election, he won't leave office.
Trump is responsible for empowering and emboldening violence from racists and bigots. Trump has consistently called on violence against Democrats and the left-wing. He retweeted that 'The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat' and 'When the looting starts the shooting starts' (Blake 2020). He denies being a white supremacist, but why is that all white supremacists gravitate to Trump's message. It says a lot about his supporters.
Trump is blatantly racist and many of his tweets and rambling speeches dog-whistle to his racist voter base. He has refused to condemn white supremacy. He has described Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis as 'good people'. He told the white supremacist incels, Proud Boys', to 'stand back and stand by', which the Proud Boys immediately adopted as their slogan, while they were encouraged by the President to commit violence against those they hate, such as leftists, black lives matter advocates, or other anti-fascist and anti-racist elements (Palmer 2020).
In August violence erupted in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after police shot a black man, Jacob Blake, leaving him paralysed. A 17 year old boy named Kyle Rittenhouse, illegally armed himself and travelled from the neighbouring state of Illinois, to shoot the protesters. Rittenhouse shot three people, two of whom died. This gutless act of violence was not condemned by Trump, who went on to defend Rittenhouse's actions ... as did most Trump supporters. Department of Homeland Security officials were directed to defend Rittenhouse's heinous crimes (Brewster 2020).
These fascist are no different to the white supremacists who unleashed Kristallnacht in 1930s Germany, empowered and emboldened by Hitler. Trump is paving the way for another dictatorship, another Kristallnacht, another war between fascists and anti-fascists.
When it was revealed that Russia had placed bounties on the lives of US soldiers in Afghanistan, the ever-tweeting Trump was strangely silent (Savage, Schmitt & Schwirtz 2020). He failed to raise the issue or to condemn Putin over it. He took no action. This is no great surprise. Trump has no respect for the military and has been caught stating that soldiers killed in battle defending the United States are 'suckers and losers' (Hirsh 2020).
Former Trump aide, retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster states that Trump is aiding and abetting Russian president, Vladimir Putin, by failing to acknowledge Russia's misinformation campaign being waged in the United States (Sanger 2020).
So why do his followers continue defending him? They state that they are patriots, yet grovel at the feet of Traitor Trump as he destroys the nation they claim to love.
To quote Forest Gump, 'stupid is as stupid does'. Trump is clearly a traitor to his own people. As millions of people were contracting COVID-19 and hundreds of thousands dying from it, he treated it as a joke and mocked those who tried to control it. In mid-September 2020, Trump stated that there would be a COVID-19 vaccine within three to four weeks (Marsh 2020). Three weeks later there was no vaccine in sight ... and Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19.
In 1977, Pink Floyd released an album called Animals. The lyrics from the song Pigs are extremely apt to Trump, so much so that Roger Waters used it in his 2017/18 world tour: 'Big man, pig man, ha ha charade you are'. Trump is a pig, gorging himself at the trough while America degenerates. Trump is a charade. There was another song on that album, called Dogs, whose lyrics are very descriptive of Trump: 'You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to, So that when they turn their backs on you, You'll get the chance to put the knife in ... And when you lose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown'.
Trump is reaping what he has sown. He is the victim of his own stupidity, which tragically has killed more than 210,000 people and will likely kill many thousands more.
Trump is such a liar that many people doubted he had actually contracted COVID-19. He had been hospitalised and on oxygen according to his doctors, but within a few days of the diagnosis, he was back at work saying that COVID-19 was nothing to worry about. 210,000 dead people and their families would likely disagree with this cretin. It's easy for a simpleton such as Trump to tell people, 'Do not be afraid', when he has the best medical treatment that money can buy.
Even with his pathological lying, hate-speech, snout-in-the-trough corruption, Don the Con's racist, sexist, misogynistic, white-supremacist snowflake supporters expect people to have sympathy for Trump and his racist wife, Melania, as they are treated for COVID-19.
That isn't going to happen.
Sympathy for the Trumps?
How about sympathy for their victims.
References
ABC News 2020, 'US President Donald Trump paid no income tax for 10 years, says New York Times report', 28 September, viewed 5 October 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-28/trump-paid-just-24750-in-us-income-taxes-in-20162c-2017/12709418.
Blake, A 2020, '‘The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.' ‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts.’ Twice in 25 hours, Trump tweets conspicuous allusions to violence', The Washington Post, 30 May, viewed 5 October 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/28/trump-retweets-video-saying-only-good-democrat-is-dead-democrat/.
Brewster, J 2020, 'Report: Trump Officials Were Directed To Defend Kyle Rittenhouse Publicly, Documents Show', Forbes, 1 October, viewed 5 October 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2020/10/01/report-trump-officials-were-directed-to-defend-kyle-rittenhouse-publicly-documents-show.
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