Pants on Fire

Since the first information came out of Wuhan, China, concerning the deadly coronavirus, Donald Trump has bungled the U.S. response by calling it a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats in order to make him look bad (as if he needed any help in that regard). He has done this in various and transparent ways. He has lied due to unparalleled ignorance. He has lied in the interest of political self-preservation. He has lied and quickly contradicted himself without shame or remorse. To occasionally break this cycle of deliberate lie after deliberate lie, he deftly switches gears and spews the unhinged ramblings of someone who has simply lost touch with reality.

Just a few examples over a mere one-month span:

Feb. 24:  “The coronavirus is very much under control. Stock market starting to look very good.”  Consecutive lies.

Feb. 26:  “The 15 cases (in the U.S.) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”  Lie.

Feb. 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”  Lie. (South Koreans put their faith in accurate information, comprehensive testing, and personal sacrifice and it works!)

Feb. 28:  “We’re ordering a lot of supplies. We’re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn’t be ordering unless it was something like this. But, we’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”  Unhinged.

Mar. 4:  There are “hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by sitting around and even going to work.”  Lie.

Mar. 5:  “I never said people that are feeling sick should go to work. That’s just more ‘Fake News’ and disinformation put out by the Democrats.”   Lie and a contradiction of his lie the previous day.

Mar. 6:   “Anybody right now and yesterday. Anybody that needs a test, gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful. The tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”   Lie and unhinged.

Mar. 11:  When questioned on the possibility that up to 100 million Americans could be exposed to the virus, Trump replied, “Different numbers. All different numbers. Very large numbers. And some small numbers,too, by the way.”   Unhinged.

Mar. 16:  When Trump was asked to rate his response to the coronavirus crisis, he said, “I’d rate it a 10.” If he meant on a scale of 1 to 100, okay.

Mar. 17:  “I’ve always known this was real. … I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”  Lie contradicted by his many previous lies.

Mar. 29:  By Trumpian standards, if the U.S. death toll can be held to 100,000 to 200,000, we’ve have done “a very good job.”   Unhinged, despicable, and insane.

More of the same will, inevitably, follow.

Trump accepts no blame (“I don’t take responsibility at all”) for the abject failures of his administration to deal quickly or effectively with this crisis. President Harry S. Truman once said, “The buck stops here.” Apparently, Donald “Stable Genius” Trump agrees … the buck stops with Harry Truman!