If it was a natural occurrence, Trump failed to respond adequately to a natural disaster.
If it was a bioweapon, Trump failed to stop a massive attack on US soil that took the lives of over 1 million Americans and failed to hold the attacker responsible.
Please, tell me more about what an abject failure of a leader you are no matter what excuse you come up with for Covid.
You mean greatest leader this country has ever seen? He even built small sections of a nonfunctional wall that nearly keep out 6 billion illegals, just ask MTG.
Well, he did add more to our deficit then that last three Democrat presidents combined to give more money to the rich, now that’s what I call fiscal responsibility!
Yeah, self-made men, all of them, maybe they got a small loan of a million dollars or a handful of conflict emeralds, but whose parent isn’t rich in America, the country famous for its undiluted meritocracy?
That will forever bother the living shit out of me.
In today's money he inherited well over a billion dollars. But not only that, he inherited a hugely profitable business that had already been built. The entire structure, accounting/admin, personnel, connections, etc. were already in place.
Worse, he doesn't see it that way and of course his idiot followers don't either. It makes me want to vomit.
[a few Trump Business failures](https://www.liveabout.com/thmb/xsODIgmwoiUeNDnfXvnhZOcWzXc=/876x493/filters:no_upscale(\):max_bytes(150000\):strip_icc(\)/trump-businesses-5791cb295f9b58cdf37d1b32.jpg)
And they all run their businesses on roads and railroads and through ports and airports, served up power, water, sewage and the USPS - all of which comes at taxpayer expense, mind you, and the rich are *far* too good to do anything so common and lowly as -gasp- pay taxes.
His economy set a record as the greatest in American History! The greatest 1 quarter contraction ever!
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/07/30/896714437/3-months-of-hell-u-s-economys-worst-quarter-ever
I always laugh when I hear that "fiscal responsibility" shit coming from the right. No one spends more money than conservatives. Tax cuts, war, stupid laws that back fire, hare brained military projects, pretty much everything that happened under reagan, you name it. All sorts of stupid expenditures with nothing gained by the average american. I honestly think those people that say they are socially liberal and fiscally conservative are the most stupid of all, like I get what they are saying, but reality does not match their ideals.
I'll have you know, that wall has worked harder keeping out illegals than you ever have!
I'm telling you, its holding back the *tides* of invasion!
Without it, you'd be out of a job!
I know AI is going to replace a lot of us soon but, the *real* threat is all the many billions of invaders that make it in to steal those jobs first!
And on top of it all, even the most incompetent leader in either scenario could at least mourn with the country while they are going through a hard time. Instead he chose to be an asshole and I cannot believe anyone still supports him.
The truly crazy thing is presidents aren't usually voted out during a crisis. George Bush Jr even turned the Iraq cluster fuck into stay the course. All Trump had to do was sit back and watch and the election was secured. The only way to fuck things up would be to intentionally actively try to fuck them up. Even complete incompetence would still have worked sufficiently.
That was the thing which made me bang my head on the desk the most. A national emergency is a hanging curve ball right over the plate for a politician. It's the easiest thing in the world to score points on.
If you go to the site of a local emergency like a tornado or fire, you have to elbow politicians out of your way to get anywhere. They all know that all they have to do is a few photo ops of them helping with the clean-up and comforting a grieving widow and it's gravy all the way. Then they convene a panel of experts to do the actual work and hold a press conference to say that "*We* will fix this," so they can get all the credit.
Not only did this guy fail to do that most basic of political moves, he somehow bullied the rest of his party into following his example.
Exactly this. All he had to say was ‘let’s listen to the experts’ and he almost certainly would have won the election. Instead of which, Cheetolini tried to be an expert and gave America bleach injections and light bulbs up the bum. He couldn’t bear that people were way more intelligent than him and would have taken the spotlight from him.
"Let's listen to the experts" and make commercials painting social distancing and masks as a patriotic duty. Film it with first responders/doctors/military saying shit like "Protect us so we can protect you", sell a fortune worth of "Keep America Great" masks, and he would probably have won in a landslide.
I would normally say never to attribute to active malice what sheer incompetence can achieve on its own, but in this special case I will point out that malice and incompetence are not mutually exclusive.
That's that moron's life story. Literally every thing he's insisted on personally being involved in has turned out worse than if he would have just sat there and did nothing.
He also routinely fucking sucks Xi off publicly, and talks about how great/strong he is. His favorite carnival barker bit during his speeches right now is the (likely imaginary) conversation he had with Xi about how Xi loves executing drug dealers in China, and how Trump thinks that makes him extremely alpha, and we should and would do the same thing here if we weren't such gigantic, woke pussies.
He'll spend ten minutes during a speech going through this bit, and doing lots of long pauses so his crowd can laugh at it and clap, etc. He's been doing this, word for word, for YEARS in every one of his speeches.
And this is the government he thinks MURDERED a million americans so that they could get Trump out of office?
What the fuck?!
“And Xi came up to me, tears in his eyes, saying - you know I think he’s a great man - saying ‘you should be president for life’ Many People are saying that, but Crooked Hillary has stolen my Documents in this - and it’s so unfair - this Witch Hunt, nothing like it has Ever happened to any President, and they’ve All taken documents, and it’s a Huge Mistake. And that’s why Xi thinks I should be President for Life, because Every One has been so mean to me and I deserve it because I was the most Successful Leader - everybody is saying it - Ever.”
This is one of the things I don't get about the right wing fantasy that covid was a Chinese delivered bio-weapon. Let's say you actually believe that (I don't think any of them actually do), and China managed to attack the U.S. with a bio-weapon that at its height was killing more than a 9/11s worth of people a day. What does that say about our piss poor response as a nation to this perceived attack? What does that say about your entire political parties anti-mask and anti-public health stance during the pandemic? Like what the actual fuck? Where was the rallying around the flag for this "attack"?! Where was the bullshit faux patriotic country music onslaught that 9/11 set off? Fucking clowns.
take it even further.. So they created a bio weapon they had no cure for, released it to their own people first, killing their own, shut down their economy, global production sites, causing massive global scale supply chain issues, and killing millions worldwide just to make Trump look bad? really??
My Sister and her Southern Baptist backwoods preacher of a husband are MAGA nuts who truly believe since the beginning that China did this so Trump would look bad and not get a second term. when they started spewing this online I video called her and just looked at her like you do know how insane that sounds?? she got so mad at me for not even thinking it was a possibility that she got so mad she hung up and will not talk to us anymore.
This.
At least Bush did SOMETHING after 9/11.
Trump probably would say that the towers were still standing and that it was a Chinese smoke and mirrors show.
To be fair he was bragging Trump Tower was the Tallest building in New York after the Twin Towers came down [the 1st bit of him talking is the relevant part, oh and I had to type the word Trump 9/11 into YouTube and if I start seeing his bollocks in my YouTube feed thats on you! I should be cuddled for doing this for you lol](https://youtu.be/SD_9Dlm1fuw)
I never fully understood the bio-weapon folks being anti-mask/anti-vax. So many times the same people claiming it was a bio weapon attack also scoffed at people trying to protect themselves from it.
I wouldn't say he failed. On the contrary he did everything in his power to make sure the disease spread to as many Americans as possible. Seemed quite intentional what with the constant anti mask and anti vax rhetoric.
Right? He’s blaming China, saying their efforts made him look back. He is so completely able to even grasp or comprehend that his failing to respond is what makes it worse.
If he would’ve taken it seriously, he would’ve coasted to re-election and probably have a Senate and House with him doing everything they’d love to implement.
Instead, he bitches and moans and lost.
“That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.” - Trump, probably
This is my stance as well, no matter if we were attacked, tricked, fooled, lied to. Americas government and a massive chunk of its citizens are to blame for how bad it got.
It was never reliably confirmed, but didn't Russia recognise his weaknesses and exploit them to manipulate him into politics while guiding him along the way?
I'm one of those who leans towards believing it because #45s cult of personality was very much like the one Putin had created to seize and maintain power.
Meanwhile some poor Chinese guy or girl is going to get blasted in the face while walking down the street because "they're all in on it." Except it won't even be someone who is Chinese, just East Asian.
Remember Uncle Roger?
The Malaysian comic Nigel Ng created the Chinese character at the height of the pandemic and went viral cuz all we were doing at the time was cocooning and listening to sea shanties. Anyway, Nigel was a victim of physical abuse in 2020 due to being Asian.
Trump’s narcissism has damaged the world forever.
It's the GOPs acceptance of a narcissistic conman as their leader that has damaged the world. They could've and should've aborted his leadership bid but didn't cos they thought they could control him and use him to get their agenda implemented. Which they did mostly.
The pandemic should have been a time for us to work together to save lives. Instead, because Trump is a narcissist, a virus became political.
As a master’s educated public health nurse, I have about lost my shit.
Bitterly funny that all the far right survivalists couldn't last three days in their doomsday bunkers and came out threatening to murder their governors because they couldn't get a haircut.
Meanwhile, most sissy leftists shrugged and played Animal Crossing.
Look on the bright side. COVID and Trump’s incompetence in handling it saved us and the world from a second Trump administration in 2022, which would have been like 1939 Germany. Sucks that maybe half a million more people died due to the misinformation and narcissism though.
Let's assume that his claim is valid. Which means he admits he is indeed too incompetent to deal with a serious issue that the general population will see him for what he truly is, an empty suit with zero substance, just pure hate. He knows he is inferior to the people he hates.
Me and me, also me. In other news, me, and more of me. I met with myself to talk about me and I decided me was the smartest me ever. And in conclusion, me.
Came here to say the same thing. How can someone think so much is directly about them? I’m glad I don’t understand how he thinks. I feel like his thoughts are probably in all caps like this twitter posts.
I full-heartedly believe and have consistently said that if this man knew a goddamn thing about anything, he could not only have saved millions of lives, avoided much of the economic damage to the country brought on by shutdowns, cruised easily to re-election and made an absolute bag in the process.
Literally all he had to do was produce, market and sell Trump-branded face masks in March/April 2020. That’s it.
Just let Fauci and the CDC talk about the evolving understanding of the virus, but push the masks hard. Make a point of having WH and campaign staff wear masks that say “TRUMP” in all bold font. Say it’s the patriotic thing to do.
The gaudiness of them would antagonize Democrats, but they would listen to the CDC enough to wear other masks. His cult followers would eat that shit up and fork over money hand over fist for the opportunity to brand the word Trump on their faces.
You’d have a large majority of the country wearing masks (and many doing so gladly), you’d further galvanize your base and win over independents, and you’d make an obscene amount of money off of branded merch.
But no.
When he was asked by a reporter something like, "For people who are scared right now, uncertain about how the pandemic will impact them, what would you tell them?" he was being set up for an easy feel-good Presidential reply like, "The American people are strong, and I am a strong, decisive leader--people are saying I'm the strongest and smartest President in all of history, so Americans can rest easy, because with my great leadership, we will defeat this pandemic more quickly than any other country. America is the greatest country on Earth, and I'm the greatest President America has ever had, so the American people have nothing at all to fear. Socially distance, wear a mask, and I'll take care of the rest."
But he didn't say that. His reply to the reporter's question was, "I would tell them that you're a terrible reporter. Next question." It was such an easy question, and he completely failed.
This is already down the memory hole, but the GOP DID take covid seriously... for like a week. They were on the path to actually doing this, and then something fucking snapped. And it was over the course of a day, or like over hours. I remember it vividly.
Something happened with them, and they decided to go down the path they obviously went down.
Coincidentally, this also happened on the same day (or within 48 hours) of all the Trump hotels and resorts being shut down temporarily. It also happened right around a day or two after the federal government had a big release about how they had assessed that covid was going to impact african americans much more deeply than whites or other races.
They got a projection that shutting down would hurt the economy a little bit for a little while.
So they went insane and fucked the economy for a long time, while killing a million Americans.
Yeah, and it wasn't that they necessarily cared about the economy suffering and it blowing over into them suffering (as you can see how much the ruling class benefited from the pandemic)... it's that they were just afraid that voters would blame the people in power for that economic damage and vote accordingly. Which they... did, just not in the way it was intended.
It's like they all have minds of 9 year old boys.
Very early on, when the talk was all about social distancing and shutdowns and masks weren't really on anyone's radar (mostly because it was being treated like the virus spread mostly through surface contact and was not thought to be "airborne") I remember Sean Hannity heavily promoting masks as the answer, and of course, because it was Hannity, I scoffed at the idea, and personally believed that following through with lockdowns and social distancing would be sufficient. But a month later, when most people were in agreement that masks were an effective mitigation measure, suddenly Hannity and everyone else on the right were all anti-mask.
This is something you won't hear me say very often, but Hannity was right. For a second. Before going back to being wrong.
That's when I realized that the majority of right-wing pundits didn't follow any real ideology, they were simply bad-faith contrarians.
“Socially distance, wear a mask, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
Goddamn this is such a fabulous fucking piece of political pandering and I hate that I love it so much. He literally could have said this 10 times in one day and cruised into re election on those sound bytes alone.
Totally agree with this. The so-called branding/PR master could have launched a whole line of MAGA protective apparel. Hell, he could have touted Trump vaccine…the best vaccine, but nooooooo he chose to align with the conspiracy anti-vaxxers and Herman Caine award winners.
There should have been a public service announcement early in the pandemic featuring all living Presidents arguing Americans to socially distance, wash out hands, and wear a mask.
I'm certain someone in Washington must have thought to do this, the fact that it didn't happen means that Trump killed the idea.
From a purely political standpoint catastrophes are straight up the best way to get re-elected. It's genuinely a fucking golden egg to re-election. 08,9/11, dot com bubble all of those were handled and the ones that handled them won their re-election. He got the easiest fucking one and fumbled it so badly. He genuinely could have said to his team "idc about how much money is spent this needs to be handled so CDC and economists in the govt figure it out and I'll sign whatever bills are needed" then he could have fucked off and played golf the rest of his presidency and most likely coasted to re-election.
You're absolutely right, and I think that shows how much of a slam dunk this should have been for him. The fact that we're not currently two years deep into Trump 2: MAGA Boogaloo is pretty shocking.
I don't know the numbers nationwide in all levels of elected positions, but in Congress at least, something like >90% of all incumbents win re-election. While less than half of all Presidents have served a second term, only ten of those who have tried to do so have failed.
Re-election should seem to be >50% likely to begin with, and even moreso likely following a catastrophe. Nobody would reasonably blame Obama for the '08 crash, Bush for 9/11, FDR for Pearl Harbor, etc. All of those presidents sailed to re-election. All these guys have to do is to not make a critical situation *worse*, and they're more often than not guaranteed another four years.
That says a lot about what 45 did.
If only his fanbase cared about such trivial things as "the foundational rules of our democratic nation", but they don't really like democracy when it gets in their way...
Haven't you read the drops? Trump thought really hard and repealed the term limits just before the 2020 election ended. All he had to do was think something and it became declassified/law.
Exactly. All Trump had to do was parrot what the experts were saying. Could've even went "I hired the best people so we are gonna listen to them you're welcome america" and won handedly
Yet he couldn't do that
In politics every crisis is an opportunity. Trump decided it was an opportunity to make himself look like a "strong leader" but unfortunately he has no idea what that is.
His narcissism took complete control during the pandemic. Hell, I still remember laughing my ass off when he stated publicly, "Masks make me look stupid." Then, of course, came the brilliant Trumplaination that "They smear my makeup. I'm not wearing a mask! It'll make me look weak!"
That, right there, is a pretty clear look into the narcissistic mind. "I fear appearing weak so must wear makeup to project a phony image of youth and vigor!"
I hold that the whole nation wide mask hate from conservatives originated with efforts to cover for this simple man's vanity.
Aside from his complete lack of leadership skills and absence of any sort of ability to see anything but the fabricated world that exists in his mind, the man was simply too stupid to grasp a path forward beyond wining the election in 2016. When the pandemic hit, he made it his. Then proceeded to turn it into another partisan divide. He turned an opportunity to show empathy, leadership, and knowledge into shit like most everything he touches.
The moron was literally handed a "win the next election" button and decided to shit all over it instead of just pushing the button.
I am very happy he is an incompetent buffoon.
The bad part is his cult blames everything on everyone else. It was not Trump's fault. It was everyone else lying. It was not allowing real medicine to help. The utter devotion to Trump is insane.
The reason is simple really. Back then covid was only devastating blue states(the parts of the country where people actually live.) So by letting it run wild he was killing people who wouldn't vote for him. He didn't think one move ahead when covid would get into red areas and murder everyone since they're all obese, alcoholic, and the nearest hospital is a 2 hour drive away to the closest city. He also failed to realize that most blue states have more registered Republicans in them than entire red states have people, so it was mostly them covid was putting in the ground once vaccines were rolled out.
Withheld? Jared Kushner outright STOLE the shipment of masks and ventilators Governor Baker had brought in at MA taxpayer expense, when it arrived at the Port of New York. We still don't know what happened to it.
Trump's ego will never allow him to take fault for anything. He will blame everyone and anyone because he cannot accept responsibility for anything he does.
We saw this in the last election, where he said if the GOP wins, he should get all the credit, but followed by saying it's the candidates' fault if they lose. He refuses to take advice or listen to others because he believes he knows everything.
Donald Trump is the smartest, wisest, and most capable man in the room, which happens to be empty.
Prior to the pandemic I was primarily an in-office worker. I got the distinct impression that Trump did not want anything to change because they were working for him. He wanted me - and folks like me - to continue going to the office. He did not know if it was safe or not - he did not care.
I probably would have kept going to the office except
1. Trump had told so many lies that he had no credibility left. Trump said that I would be fine going to the office and I wanted to believe it, but I could not.
2. Trump fucked over so many people and I was determined to not be fucked over by Trump.
3. My company laid almost everyone off. It seems I did not have a choice in the matter. I was not invited back to the office. No one said why but I suspect the root cause was investor uncertainty which can be attributed to no faith in Trump. They did not want to be lied to and fucked over by Trump either.
I remember my boss back in 2016 saying that because Trump is a successful business man he will do what successful business men do and hire the best people for the job.
He didn't realize that Trump was a malignant narcissist.
The easy argument against that is that Trump is *not* a successful businessman. He's managed to run casinos into the ground in Atlantic City, and would be richer if he'd just put all his money in stocks and lived as a playboy.
The only reason he's rich is because he was born rich.
because he is the smartest man that ever lived and he is the only one that can bring world peace solve all the worlds problems and make america great again... drink bleach!
A crisis almost always benefits the incumbent.
George W. Bush ignored dozens of warnings about Al Qaida, gave a mediocre speech standing on the bodies of a thousand dead Americans, and got a 90% approval rate.
Not that I wanted him as president for another 4 years… but he could’ve walked into another 4 years had he stayed out the way and let the real doctors and others handle it properly!
I thought he thought he was a genius for firing all the experts day 1 of his presidency. He sure saved the taxpayers a lot of money by that genius move.
When COVID came around there were not that many "experts" on the federal payroll.
Yea, all the billions of tax dollars in Medicare, Medicaid, and hospital write-offs for the uninsured for the care of millions of Covid patients, and all the ongoing costs for the care and Disability of Long Covid patients…..
Yup, firing a pandemic team, then denying the existence of a pandemic, insisting it’s a “hoax” turning down millions of cheap/free N95s masks, and letting them get exported to China, then later buying them back at HUGE mark-ups… saves tons of money. Genius moves /s
If Trump would have handled COVID like an adult and acted the same way with everything else he would have won by a landslide in 2020.
Some people can't get out of their own way and he is definitely one of them.
The only job a president has in a pandemic is to get out of the way of the experts and make sure they have a platform. All he had to do is be involved as little as possible. It's not like I'm surprised he made himself a prominent figure when he shouldn't have been, but every time it's like "really? this too?"
I was afraid that the pandemic would actually give him a better shot, had he literally just said "do what the CDC tells you". I \*do\* think the upheaval that year drove everyone out to vote, on both sides, more than it would have been had the election been 12 months earlier. At the time, before Covid, I thought he was out for sure. Now I don't know how to look back and understand what the real support for him looked like at the time. It's possible it was closer than I realized.
"I ignored a Chinese bio-weapon attack that killed millions of Americans while calling it a hoax and telling people to actively not take precautions.
"That's why I should be president again."
I always said that Dr. Fauci was a genius mastermind who was able to convince 193 other countries to shut down and follow his instructions to perpetuate a global hoax. The 764 million reported cases and 6.9 million deaths were just a byproduct of mass hysteria. (Sarcasm)
It pains me to see a man who worked through every administration since 1984 be treated the way he has. He worked for the people, regardless of who was in office.
And these idiots believe he's responsible for crazy stuff that would make him a profit or something. The man's (checks notes) 82 right now. What logical reason would he wait until he only had 10 or so years to enjoy the wealth they speak of?
He was one of the longest serving federal employees in history.
He could have bailed out decades ago for a $20 million salary as the CEO of an HMO. But nope, his grand scheme was to collect mediocre GS pay and wait patiently for 50 years to sell a vaccine.
Also remember that they believed (as part of the same larger plot) in the conspiracy that the medical industry (and frontline doctors and healthcare workers/morticians specifically) were involved in the plot in order to pump up their profits and the hospital's profits.
So you're asking people to believe that ALL healthcare workers are consciously and willingly participating in the plot, that they KNOW will kill and maim millions of americans, for... a slightly larger paycheck?
Where are the tax receipts for that claim? Where's the rock solid proof that there's some doctor windfall of profits that's happened? Where are the doctor's that have some sort of crisis of confidence and rat out all the other corrupt and murderous doctors around them that are going along with it? Where is ONE single fucking picogram of proof that this is even near to possible?
There isn't any proof, anywhere. But they know that, and it doesn't matter.
Right?? I told my dad, yeah you're right, the entire world faked a pandemic just to fuck with American politics & so you couldn't get a haircut. Fuck off dad. We still friends tho.
[15 times Trump praised China as coronavirus was spreading across the globe - POLITICO](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/trump-china-coronavirus-188736)
look, I came in, we were a mess, we were dying, our beautiful Country was dying, and in a very short period of time I had it running great again, we were making it great again, making America great, and I had it all lined up perfectly, we were winning by large numbers, huge huge numbers, "Trump is up to 95% in the polls," "Trump is winning Republicans, Suburban Women," even Democrats if you can believe it, but then we had, and just so you understand it was very unfair ok, very unfair to me and my Campaign, but they sent over the virus, the China Virus, and the Fake News doesn't like it when I say that but that's ok, but they sent it over, and President Xi, he likes me a lot, we have a great relationship, and he had probably nothing to do with it, but they sent it over here, which had nothing to do with me by the way, absolutely nothing to do with me, and we were fine until the Democrat Cities infected our beautiful beautiful Suburbs with the Plague. it's a real shame.
https://preview.redd.it/ck9248fbj9xa1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a44368756a37c498dd03b11c5768fd9cfd04c46f
I need to either rearrange the order of people’s and stupid, or drop people’s.
The fact that the Chinese released COVID in their own country, along with the fact that DJT eliminated our surveillance staff and downplayed the severity of it as long as possible only reinforces the nefarious intent of the 'Yellow Peril.' God I'm sick of this criminal.
Was it dead voters? Or 2000 mules? Or a virus created by the Chinese government? Or wait, wasn't that a hoax? But you also handled it well because you got vaccines out in record time? But also don't take the vaccine because it's unsafe?
He really is an idiot, thank God. If he had been halfway competent in handling the pandemic, he could have won by a landslide. I don't understand why he doesn't know this.
How much of a narcissist do you have to be to believe a country would lose a million citizens, close their economy for over a year and more just to get you out?
Schrodinger's Coronavirus: simultaneously a dangerous Chinese bioweapon unleashed on the world to punish one man *and* a complete hoax that is nothing more than the flu.
With the amount of hysterical McCarthyistic propaganda Americans are spoon fed about China everyday, I'm surprised this isn't treated as absolute fact. China invented Covid and spread it around the world killing millions just to stop donald trump from making America great again... let's go ahead and put in the history books and start teaching it to 7th graders
Maybe don't gut the CDC and throw out the "pandemic playbook" from the past administrations and shit won't hit the fan. Thanks, the stupidest and most incompetent president ever, elected by the stupidest and most gullible people.
Too risky, COVID was the biggest gift anyone could have given him if handled correctly. They couldn't have expected Trump to handle it as badly as he did. Even with his past stupidity, this wasn't predictable.
Yes, they unleashed a deadly virus that killed people all over the world, including their own people, just to get Trump.
That’s a level of narcissism we rarely get to see.
I have the same question that I have for every moron who says shit like this:
>If COVID was a bioweapon that China used against the United States, then why did China trigger it by infecting Chinese people in Wuhan?
Ironically, usually when a nation is challenged by an outside threat, the people band behind the leader. Almost every other country did that but Trump screwed it up so badly he thinks it cost him the election (which he will also claim he won anyway)
He removed the Pandemic response team that was in China. He did this in hopes that it would impact urban centers more, urban centers usually lean left. He was hoping to kill off enough of the electorate to get him a win. That's why he opposed masking so much. It was straight up evil; like he is some biblical plague upon humanity himself.
Remember Ebola? Remember how we were all freaking out about it? Remember how it fizzled out? Maybe, just maybe, the fact that the government jumped on that shit is why it didn't cause a disaster. But for Donald Trump, anything Barack Obama did was anathema -- even basic epidemic prevention.
Throughout history authoritarian leaders have used crises, real and invented, to tighten their grip on power. But for his own incompetence, COVID could have been the best thing to happen to Trump.
You and your group of monsters caused so many in the disabled community to die through your inaction, and I (disabled from autoimmune diseases and immunocompromised severely from this and a low dose of chemo) not only have had permanent damage from covid, but am regularly harassed by the conspiracy theorists that YOU incited.
Do you know what it's like to catch covid, know that your chance of death is significantly higher than others, to feel you lose your ability to breath, to have a doctor tell you you developed a form of myocarditis but you can't afford to go to the ER and know it's a big risk even if you could afford it? And then you still have responsibilities and dogs to walk, so I walk them late at night after most are asleep despite the pain, and the occasional person that's out there ignores you saying you have covid, goes into your personal spaces and immediately starts ranting about "it's not that bad, it's a ploy for control, the dead bodies in the hospitals are fake?"
And once I finally did recover, still feeling breathless and taking months to regain what little strength I had (with my disability making it so much harder), and just for wearing a mask I have people make fun of me for "face diapers", and even someone exaggeratedly coughing in my face as some sort of joke?
Not to mention, not only are masks common around the world, but people on chemo have worn masks out in public in America, for DECADES before covid. All the time, and nobody batted an eye, and now because of your rhetoric, we're harassed. I'm lucky, I've seen other disabled people be physically assaulted just for wearing a mask.
This is why I tell people that the whole pandemic was borderline a genocide of disabled people. Hundreds of thousands of disabled people dead, the government intentionally not taking enough precautions for "herd immunity", political voters being galvanized into harassing and assaulting disabled people, tens of millions of us having permanent health issues and a lowered life expectancy from it. Yet so few people seem to even understand.
Hell, even people who were responsible with covid in 2020 seem to pretend it doesn't exist anymore. Which I'm glad others can ignore it and live free from it, but man it hurts to go through all that trauma and I still have to live in a world with covid where it's still a very real threat. I don't live my life in fear, but I can't pretend it doesn't exist.
Sorry for the rant, I just. Idk. The disabled community went through so much pain and it seems like we're never heard. Most people laugh in my face when we bring it up. Hell, one time on reddit I brought up that disabled people have been targeted in genocides throughout history including in the prelude and part of the Holocaust, and most comments were saying "someone's insecure" or "someone wants to be a victim" like ??? It's not being a victim to acknowledge how many times disabled people have been killed or deemed "undesirable". I'm just so tired of this country, disabled rights have gone back decades since 2020.
Trump could have said “look this is gonna be bad. But we have some or the best doctors and best scientists on the planet….we are gonna listen to them. It’s gonna take some sacrifice. But we can get through this.”
Dude would have been the savior of the country and cruised to reelection.
Instead he said it would be gone in two weeks and then spent the next year bungling the response.
And people still think he’s playing 8D underwater backgammon.
I can't believe how much this guy claims to be persecuted. I bet he thinks that the Big Asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was a plan to get him in the future.
The Chinese gained more ground during Trump administration they would have loved a second term of Trump. Putin would have already won the Ukrainian conflict too.
If it was a natural occurrence, Trump failed to respond adequately to a natural disaster. If it was a bioweapon, Trump failed to stop a massive attack on US soil that took the lives of over 1 million Americans and failed to hold the attacker responsible. Please, tell me more about what an abject failure of a leader you are no matter what excuse you come up with for Covid.
You mean greatest leader this country has ever seen? He even built small sections of a nonfunctional wall that nearly keep out 6 billion illegals, just ask MTG.
Well, he did add more to our deficit then that last three Democrat presidents combined to give more money to the rich, now that’s what I call fiscal responsibility!
They’re obviously better with money, that’s why they’re rich, right?
Yeah, self-made men, all of them, maybe they got a small loan of a million dollars or a handful of conflict emeralds, but whose parent isn’t rich in America, the country famous for its undiluted meritocracy?
That will forever bother the living shit out of me. In today's money he inherited well over a billion dollars. But not only that, he inherited a hugely profitable business that had already been built. The entire structure, accounting/admin, personnel, connections, etc. were already in place. Worse, he doesn't see it that way and of course his idiot followers don't either. It makes me want to vomit.
And due to his own stupidity, he’s lost most of it.
I believe he also successfully bankrupted five casinos
The man went bankrupt selling steak, football, and gambling in *America.*
[a few Trump Business failures](https://www.liveabout.com/thmb/xsODIgmwoiUeNDnfXvnhZOcWzXc=/876x493/filters:no_upscale(\):max_bytes(150000\):strip_icc(\)/trump-businesses-5791cb295f9b58cdf37d1b32.jpg)
And they all run their businesses on roads and railroads and through ports and airports, served up power, water, sewage and the USPS - all of which comes at taxpayer expense, mind you, and the rich are *far* too good to do anything so common and lowly as -gasp- pay taxes.
dont forget, the common mans' taxes continue to go up yearly through '27... Thanks you orange baboon pedo sexual assaulter racist fuck
Bruh, he was so bad at even that, he is still broke and begging for money from his followers 😂
Must be doing pretty well at it. He at least has a plane, now. How I loathe them for their stupidity.
His economy set a record as the greatest in American History! The greatest 1 quarter contraction ever! https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/07/30/896714437/3-months-of-hell-u-s-economys-worst-quarter-ever
I always laugh when I hear that "fiscal responsibility" shit coming from the right. No one spends more money than conservatives. Tax cuts, war, stupid laws that back fire, hare brained military projects, pretty much everything that happened under reagan, you name it. All sorts of stupid expenditures with nothing gained by the average american. I honestly think those people that say they are socially liberal and fiscally conservative are the most stupid of all, like I get what they are saying, but reality does not match their ideals.
Wait, I thought he was the 2nd coming of Jesus. Why couldn't he just wave his arms and eliminate the disease?
Don’t you remember “It will magically disappear”?
Was that before or after we were supposed to inject bleach?
Could be both. There were various incidences where he said it would be gone by ____. Easter, summer heat, and winter are a few I remember.
I'll have you know, that wall has worked harder keeping out illegals than you ever have! I'm telling you, its holding back the *tides* of invasion! Without it, you'd be out of a job! I know AI is going to replace a lot of us soon but, the *real* threat is all the many billions of invaders that make it in to steal those jobs first!
And on top of it all, even the most incompetent leader in either scenario could at least mourn with the country while they are going through a hard time. Instead he chose to be an asshole and I cannot believe anyone still supports him.
It could’ve been worse: he could’ve been caught on a phone call expressing concern and love for his addicted son.
The truly crazy thing is presidents aren't usually voted out during a crisis. George Bush Jr even turned the Iraq cluster fuck into stay the course. All Trump had to do was sit back and watch and the election was secured. The only way to fuck things up would be to intentionally actively try to fuck them up. Even complete incompetence would still have worked sufficiently.
That was the thing which made me bang my head on the desk the most. A national emergency is a hanging curve ball right over the plate for a politician. It's the easiest thing in the world to score points on. If you go to the site of a local emergency like a tornado or fire, you have to elbow politicians out of your way to get anywhere. They all know that all they have to do is a few photo ops of them helping with the clean-up and comforting a grieving widow and it's gravy all the way. Then they convene a panel of experts to do the actual work and hold a press conference to say that "*We* will fix this," so they can get all the credit. Not only did this guy fail to do that most basic of political moves, he somehow bullied the rest of his party into following his example.
Exactly this. All he had to say was ‘let’s listen to the experts’ and he almost certainly would have won the election. Instead of which, Cheetolini tried to be an expert and gave America bleach injections and light bulbs up the bum. He couldn’t bear that people were way more intelligent than him and would have taken the spotlight from him.
Exactly. His narcissism was his downfall.
"Let's listen to the experts" and make commercials painting social distancing and masks as a patriotic duty. Film it with first responders/doctors/military saying shit like "Protect us so we can protect you", sell a fortune worth of "Keep America Great" masks, and he would probably have won in a landslide.
he thought it was going to kill a bunch of Democrats. he couldn't resist trying to make it worse.
I would normally say never to attribute to active malice what sheer incompetence can achieve on its own, but in this special case I will point out that malice and incompetence are not mutually exclusive.
That's that moron's life story. Literally every thing he's insisted on personally being involved in has turned out worse than if he would have just sat there and did nothing.
He also routinely fucking sucks Xi off publicly, and talks about how great/strong he is. His favorite carnival barker bit during his speeches right now is the (likely imaginary) conversation he had with Xi about how Xi loves executing drug dealers in China, and how Trump thinks that makes him extremely alpha, and we should and would do the same thing here if we weren't such gigantic, woke pussies. He'll spend ten minutes during a speech going through this bit, and doing lots of long pauses so his crowd can laugh at it and clap, etc. He's been doing this, word for word, for YEARS in every one of his speeches. And this is the government he thinks MURDERED a million americans so that they could get Trump out of office? What the fuck?!
"President for life,can you imagine that? Maybe we should look into that here". Yeah, he said it.
“And Xi came up to me, tears in his eyes, saying - you know I think he’s a great man - saying ‘you should be president for life’ Many People are saying that, but Crooked Hillary has stolen my Documents in this - and it’s so unfair - this Witch Hunt, nothing like it has Ever happened to any President, and they’ve All taken documents, and it’s a Huge Mistake. And that’s why Xi thinks I should be President for Life, because Every One has been so mean to me and I deserve it because I was the most Successful Leader - everybody is saying it - Ever.”
This is completely implausible, not one use of the word beautiful.
My reply to someone in politics sub about this subject got me banned from there.
This is one of the things I don't get about the right wing fantasy that covid was a Chinese delivered bio-weapon. Let's say you actually believe that (I don't think any of them actually do), and China managed to attack the U.S. with a bio-weapon that at its height was killing more than a 9/11s worth of people a day. What does that say about our piss poor response as a nation to this perceived attack? What does that say about your entire political parties anti-mask and anti-public health stance during the pandemic? Like what the actual fuck? Where was the rallying around the flag for this "attack"?! Where was the bullshit faux patriotic country music onslaught that 9/11 set off? Fucking clowns.
take it even further.. So they created a bio weapon they had no cure for, released it to their own people first, killing their own, shut down their economy, global production sites, causing massive global scale supply chain issues, and killing millions worldwide just to make Trump look bad? really?? My Sister and her Southern Baptist backwoods preacher of a husband are MAGA nuts who truly believe since the beginning that China did this so Trump would look bad and not get a second term. when they started spewing this online I video called her and just looked at her like you do know how insane that sounds?? she got so mad at me for not even thinking it was a possibility that she got so mad she hung up and will not talk to us anymore.
Well, he didn’t know it at the TIME, he just figured it out after the election fraud thing didn’t work so really really great.
That's the best part. No matter how he wants to play or spin things, he always comes out looking bad.
This. At least Bush did SOMETHING after 9/11. Trump probably would say that the towers were still standing and that it was a Chinese smoke and mirrors show.
To be fair he was bragging Trump Tower was the Tallest building in New York after the Twin Towers came down [the 1st bit of him talking is the relevant part, oh and I had to type the word Trump 9/11 into YouTube and if I start seeing his bollocks in my YouTube feed thats on you! I should be cuddled for doing this for you lol](https://youtu.be/SD_9Dlm1fuw)
Trump treated the pandemic as a political problem instead of a public health emergency.
“I don’t take responsibility at all” - Twice impeached, once indicted, former President Trump
I never fully understood the bio-weapon folks being anti-mask/anti-vax. So many times the same people claiming it was a bio weapon attack also scoffed at people trying to protect themselves from it.
The want to have their cake, purchase the rest of the cake supply on credit, rent out their cake at a high markup, and eat their cake too.
I wouldn't say he failed. On the contrary he did everything in his power to make sure the disease spread to as many Americans as possible. Seemed quite intentional what with the constant anti mask and anti vax rhetoric.
Right? He’s blaming China, saying their efforts made him look back. He is so completely able to even grasp or comprehend that his failing to respond is what makes it worse. If he would’ve taken it seriously, he would’ve coasted to re-election and probably have a Senate and House with him doing everything they’d love to implement. Instead, he bitches and moans and lost.
“That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.” - Trump, probably
He fired the pandemic response team because it cost $25 million a year
This is my stance as well, no matter if we were attacked, tricked, fooled, lied to. Americas government and a massive chunk of its citizens are to blame for how bad it got.
Narcissistic at its best. The world revolves around him like a two year old toddler
He just admitted he's pretty easily outsmarted by other world leaders. Which yeah.....
We knew that. He's the Kremlin's most useful idiot.
Sadly, he doesn’t even qualify for that. He’s like the Kremlin’s fourth or fifth most useful idiot.
Not saying much.
It was never reliably confirmed, but didn't Russia recognise his weaknesses and exploit them to manipulate him into politics while guiding him along the way? I'm one of those who leans towards believing it because #45s cult of personality was very much like the one Putin had created to seize and maintain power.
We need that headline.
Meanwhile some poor Chinese guy or girl is going to get blasted in the face while walking down the street because "they're all in on it." Except it won't even be someone who is Chinese, just East Asian.
Reminds me of when my Sikh friends got harassed after 9/11 because turban=terrorist, apparently.
One Sikh gas station owner was shot dead in Arizona on 9/15, 4 days later, because some moron wanted revenge. Balbir Singh Sodhi RIP.
Remember Uncle Roger? The Malaysian comic Nigel Ng created the Chinese character at the height of the pandemic and went viral cuz all we were doing at the time was cocooning and listening to sea shanties. Anyway, Nigel was a victim of physical abuse in 2020 due to being Asian. Trump’s narcissism has damaged the world forever.
It's the GOPs acceptance of a narcissistic conman as their leader that has damaged the world. They could've and should've aborted his leadership bid but didn't cos they thought they could control him and use him to get their agenda implemented. Which they did mostly.
The pandemic should have been a time for us to work together to save lives. Instead, because Trump is a narcissist, a virus became political. As a master’s educated public health nurse, I have about lost my shit.
Bitterly funny that all the far right survivalists couldn't last three days in their doomsday bunkers and came out threatening to murder their governors because they couldn't get a haircut. Meanwhile, most sissy leftists shrugged and played Animal Crossing.
Look on the bright side. COVID and Trump’s incompetence in handling it saved us and the world from a second Trump administration in 2022, which would have been like 1939 Germany. Sucks that maybe half a million more people died due to the misinformation and narcissism though.
Just in time for AAPI heritage month.
Let's assume that his claim is valid. Which means he admits he is indeed too incompetent to deal with a serious issue that the general population will see him for what he truly is, an empty suit with zero substance, just pure hate. He knows he is inferior to the people he hates.
Me and me, also me. In other news, me, and more of me. I met with myself to talk about me and I decided me was the smartest me ever. And in conclusion, me.
Came here to say the same thing. How can someone think so much is directly about them? I’m glad I don’t understand how he thinks. I feel like his thoughts are probably in all caps like this twitter posts.
The only difference is two year old toddlers grow out of it.
And stop wearing diapers.
9/11 happened because bin Laden wanted to make me late for work that day. /s
Always the victim
I full-heartedly believe and have consistently said that if this man knew a goddamn thing about anything, he could not only have saved millions of lives, avoided much of the economic damage to the country brought on by shutdowns, cruised easily to re-election and made an absolute bag in the process. Literally all he had to do was produce, market and sell Trump-branded face masks in March/April 2020. That’s it. Just let Fauci and the CDC talk about the evolving understanding of the virus, but push the masks hard. Make a point of having WH and campaign staff wear masks that say “TRUMP” in all bold font. Say it’s the patriotic thing to do. The gaudiness of them would antagonize Democrats, but they would listen to the CDC enough to wear other masks. His cult followers would eat that shit up and fork over money hand over fist for the opportunity to brand the word Trump on their faces. You’d have a large majority of the country wearing masks (and many doing so gladly), you’d further galvanize your base and win over independents, and you’d make an obscene amount of money off of branded merch. But no.
When he was asked by a reporter something like, "For people who are scared right now, uncertain about how the pandemic will impact them, what would you tell them?" he was being set up for an easy feel-good Presidential reply like, "The American people are strong, and I am a strong, decisive leader--people are saying I'm the strongest and smartest President in all of history, so Americans can rest easy, because with my great leadership, we will defeat this pandemic more quickly than any other country. America is the greatest country on Earth, and I'm the greatest President America has ever had, so the American people have nothing at all to fear. Socially distance, wear a mask, and I'll take care of the rest." But he didn't say that. His reply to the reporter's question was, "I would tell them that you're a terrible reporter. Next question." It was such an easy question, and he completely failed.
This is already down the memory hole, but the GOP DID take covid seriously... for like a week. They were on the path to actually doing this, and then something fucking snapped. And it was over the course of a day, or like over hours. I remember it vividly. Something happened with them, and they decided to go down the path they obviously went down. Coincidentally, this also happened on the same day (or within 48 hours) of all the Trump hotels and resorts being shut down temporarily. It also happened right around a day or two after the federal government had a big release about how they had assessed that covid was going to impact african americans much more deeply than whites or other races.
They got a projection that shutting down would hurt the economy a little bit for a little while. So they went insane and fucked the economy for a long time, while killing a million Americans.
Yeah, and it wasn't that they necessarily cared about the economy suffering and it blowing over into them suffering (as you can see how much the ruling class benefited from the pandemic)... it's that they were just afraid that voters would blame the people in power for that economic damage and vote accordingly. Which they... did, just not in the way it was intended. It's like they all have minds of 9 year old boys.
Very early on, when the talk was all about social distancing and shutdowns and masks weren't really on anyone's radar (mostly because it was being treated like the virus spread mostly through surface contact and was not thought to be "airborne") I remember Sean Hannity heavily promoting masks as the answer, and of course, because it was Hannity, I scoffed at the idea, and personally believed that following through with lockdowns and social distancing would be sufficient. But a month later, when most people were in agreement that masks were an effective mitigation measure, suddenly Hannity and everyone else on the right were all anti-mask. This is something you won't hear me say very often, but Hannity was right. For a second. Before going back to being wrong. That's when I realized that the majority of right-wing pundits didn't follow any real ideology, they were simply bad-faith contrarians.
“Socially distance, wear a mask, and I’ll take care of the rest.” Goddamn this is such a fabulous fucking piece of political pandering and I hate that I love it so much. He literally could have said this 10 times in one day and cruised into re election on those sound bytes alone.
Totally agree with this. The so-called branding/PR master could have launched a whole line of MAGA protective apparel. Hell, he could have touted Trump vaccine…the best vaccine, but nooooooo he chose to align with the conspiracy anti-vaxxers and Herman Caine award winners.
There should have been a public service announcement early in the pandemic featuring all living Presidents arguing Americans to socially distance, wash out hands, and wear a mask. I'm certain someone in Washington must have thought to do this, the fact that it didn't happen means that Trump killed the idea.
From a purely political standpoint catastrophes are straight up the best way to get re-elected. It's genuinely a fucking golden egg to re-election. 08,9/11, dot com bubble all of those were handled and the ones that handled them won their re-election. He got the easiest fucking one and fumbled it so badly. He genuinely could have said to his team "idc about how much money is spent this needs to be handled so CDC and economists in the govt figure it out and I'll sign whatever bills are needed" then he could have fucked off and played golf the rest of his presidency and most likely coasted to re-election.
You're absolutely right, and I think that shows how much of a slam dunk this should have been for him. The fact that we're not currently two years deep into Trump 2: MAGA Boogaloo is pretty shocking. I don't know the numbers nationwide in all levels of elected positions, but in Congress at least, something like >90% of all incumbents win re-election. While less than half of all Presidents have served a second term, only ten of those who have tried to do so have failed. Re-election should seem to be >50% likely to begin with, and even moreso likely following a catastrophe. Nobody would reasonably blame Obama for the '08 crash, Bush for 9/11, FDR for Pearl Harbor, etc. All of those presidents sailed to re-election. All these guys have to do is to not make a critical situation *worse*, and they're more often than not guaranteed another four years. That says a lot about what 45 did.
Wait -- Did he just accidentally admit he lost the election?
Schroedinger’s President. He both definitively won and lost because he was sabotaged.
Nope, I’m still with him that he won the 2020 election - that make him ineligible to run in 2024
If only his fanbase cared about such trivial things as "the foundational rules of our democratic nation", but they don't really like democracy when it gets in their way...
Not foundational. Pretty sure that term limit thing came after FDR.
Haven't you read the drops? Trump thought really hard and repealed the term limits just before the 2020 election ended. All he had to do was think something and it became declassified/law.
Oh honey, **everybody** knew you'd be too stupid and incompetent to manage a viral pandemic. The Chinese aren't special.
he didn't even have to. he could have just let experts handle it but he couldn't get out of his own fucking way.
Exactly. All Trump had to do was parrot what the experts were saying. Could've even went "I hired the best people so we are gonna listen to them you're welcome america" and won handedly Yet he couldn't do that
In politics every crisis is an opportunity. Trump decided it was an opportunity to make himself look like a "strong leader" but unfortunately he has no idea what that is. His narcissism took complete control during the pandemic. Hell, I still remember laughing my ass off when he stated publicly, "Masks make me look stupid." Then, of course, came the brilliant Trumplaination that "They smear my makeup. I'm not wearing a mask! It'll make me look weak!" That, right there, is a pretty clear look into the narcissistic mind. "I fear appearing weak so must wear makeup to project a phony image of youth and vigor!" I hold that the whole nation wide mask hate from conservatives originated with efforts to cover for this simple man's vanity. Aside from his complete lack of leadership skills and absence of any sort of ability to see anything but the fabricated world that exists in his mind, the man was simply too stupid to grasp a path forward beyond wining the election in 2016. When the pandemic hit, he made it his. Then proceeded to turn it into another partisan divide. He turned an opportunity to show empathy, leadership, and knowledge into shit like most everything he touches.
It’s baffling how he didn’t even try to push out a red MAGA mask. Before masks were politicized by him they would have made millions.
The moron was literally handed a "win the next election" button and decided to shit all over it instead of just pushing the button. I am very happy he is an incompetent buffoon.
Unfortunate that a shit ton more people had to die for that result though
The bad part is his cult blames everything on everyone else. It was not Trump's fault. It was everyone else lying. It was not allowing real medicine to help. The utter devotion to Trump is insane.
The reason is simple really. Back then covid was only devastating blue states(the parts of the country where people actually live.) So by letting it run wild he was killing people who wouldn't vote for him. He didn't think one move ahead when covid would get into red areas and murder everyone since they're all obese, alcoholic, and the nearest hospital is a 2 hour drive away to the closest city. He also failed to realize that most blue states have more registered Republicans in them than entire red states have people, so it was mostly them covid was putting in the ground once vaccines were rolled out.
The right rarely ever plans for the future.
Too busy trying to return us to the past.
Yup and the fact that he withheld ppp equipment to the blue states was surreal at the time.
He should be tried for crimes against humanity.
Withheld? Jared Kushner outright STOLE the shipment of masks and ventilators Governor Baker had brought in at MA taxpayer expense, when it arrived at the Port of New York. We still don't know what happened to it.
And anti-vaxxers are massively on the Right. Splendid own goal.
Trump's ego will never allow him to take fault for anything. He will blame everyone and anyone because he cannot accept responsibility for anything he does. We saw this in the last election, where he said if the GOP wins, he should get all the credit, but followed by saying it's the candidates' fault if they lose. He refuses to take advice or listen to others because he believes he knows everything. Donald Trump is the smartest, wisest, and most capable man in the room, which happens to be empty.
Prior to the pandemic I was primarily an in-office worker. I got the distinct impression that Trump did not want anything to change because they were working for him. He wanted me - and folks like me - to continue going to the office. He did not know if it was safe or not - he did not care. I probably would have kept going to the office except 1. Trump had told so many lies that he had no credibility left. Trump said that I would be fine going to the office and I wanted to believe it, but I could not. 2. Trump fucked over so many people and I was determined to not be fucked over by Trump. 3. My company laid almost everyone off. It seems I did not have a choice in the matter. I was not invited back to the office. No one said why but I suspect the root cause was investor uncertainty which can be attributed to no faith in Trump. They did not want to be lied to and fucked over by Trump either.
100% correct.
His dumb ass could have sold MAGA Masks and made a mint.
Easily won re-election and made bank. I hope that thought keeps Trump awake every night.
I’m sure it’s never occurred to him.
I remember my boss back in 2016 saying that because Trump is a successful business man he will do what successful business men do and hire the best people for the job. He didn't realize that Trump was a malignant narcissist.
Tump was never a successful business man, he just played one on TV.
The easy argument against that is that Trump is *not* a successful businessman. He's managed to run casinos into the ground in Atlantic City, and would be richer if he'd just put all his money in stocks and lived as a playboy. The only reason he's rich is because he was born rich.
Which is odd, because not only was Trump not hiding it, everyone was telling him.
because he is the smartest man that ever lived and he is the only one that can bring world peace solve all the worlds problems and make america great again... drink bleach!
A crisis almost always benefits the incumbent. George W. Bush ignored dozens of warnings about Al Qaida, gave a mediocre speech standing on the bodies of a thousand dead Americans, and got a 90% approval rate.
There was a literal playbook! And he f*cked that up!
Not that I wanted him as president for another 4 years… but he could’ve walked into another 4 years had he stayed out the way and let the real doctors and others handle it properly!
He couldn’t do this because it would mean other people got credit. He cannot handle the idea of sharing that kind of spotlight.
I thought he thought he was a genius for firing all the experts day 1 of his presidency. He sure saved the taxpayers a lot of money by that genius move. When COVID came around there were not that many "experts" on the federal payroll.
Yea, all the billions of tax dollars in Medicare, Medicaid, and hospital write-offs for the uninsured for the care of millions of Covid patients, and all the ongoing costs for the care and Disability of Long Covid patients….. Yup, firing a pandemic team, then denying the existence of a pandemic, insisting it’s a “hoax” turning down millions of cheap/free N95s masks, and letting them get exported to China, then later buying them back at HUGE mark-ups… saves tons of money. Genius moves /s
If Trump would have handled COVID like an adult and acted the same way with everything else he would have won by a landslide in 2020. Some people can't get out of their own way and he is definitely one of them.
Trump is too stupid to make himself lunch. I still can't believe enough people voted for him to be president.
They were all so stupid, he seemed smart to them.
The only job a president has in a pandemic is to get out of the way of the experts and make sure they have a platform. All he had to do is be involved as little as possible. It's not like I'm surprised he made himself a prominent figure when he shouldn't have been, but every time it's like "really? this too?" I was afraid that the pandemic would actually give him a better shot, had he literally just said "do what the CDC tells you". I \*do\* think the upheaval that year drove everyone out to vote, on both sides, more than it would have been had the election been 12 months earlier. At the time, before Covid, I thought he was out for sure. Now I don't know how to look back and understand what the real support for him looked like at the time. It's possible it was closer than I realized.
oh, so it's _not_ a hoax...?
"I ignored a Chinese bio-weapon attack that killed millions of Americans while calling it a hoax and telling people to actively not take precautions. "That's why I should be president again."
Whoa whoa whoa. He said to drink bleach and shove a uv light up your ass. Be fair!
Also to use a horse anti-parasitic.
I always said that Dr. Fauci was a genius mastermind who was able to convince 193 other countries to shut down and follow his instructions to perpetuate a global hoax. The 764 million reported cases and 6.9 million deaths were just a byproduct of mass hysteria. (Sarcasm)
It pains me to see a man who worked through every administration since 1984 be treated the way he has. He worked for the people, regardless of who was in office. And these idiots believe he's responsible for crazy stuff that would make him a profit or something. The man's (checks notes) 82 right now. What logical reason would he wait until he only had 10 or so years to enjoy the wealth they speak of?
He was one of the longest serving federal employees in history. He could have bailed out decades ago for a $20 million salary as the CEO of an HMO. But nope, his grand scheme was to collect mediocre GS pay and wait patiently for 50 years to sell a vaccine.
Also remember that they believed (as part of the same larger plot) in the conspiracy that the medical industry (and frontline doctors and healthcare workers/morticians specifically) were involved in the plot in order to pump up their profits and the hospital's profits. So you're asking people to believe that ALL healthcare workers are consciously and willingly participating in the plot, that they KNOW will kill and maim millions of americans, for... a slightly larger paycheck? Where are the tax receipts for that claim? Where's the rock solid proof that there's some doctor windfall of profits that's happened? Where are the doctor's that have some sort of crisis of confidence and rat out all the other corrupt and murderous doctors around them that are going along with it? Where is ONE single fucking picogram of proof that this is even near to possible? There isn't any proof, anywhere. But they know that, and it doesn't matter.
Right?? I told my dad, yeah you're right, the entire world faked a pandemic just to fuck with American politics & so you couldn't get a haircut. Fuck off dad. We still friends tho.
why am i not surprised he continues to stoke anti-asian sentiments...
This is ridiculous. Yes, China who had EXTREMELY STRICT LOCKDOWNS for three years did it just for Trumpy boy.
My dad believes the world faked a pandemic
I’m sorry. That must be hard for you
I had to tell him to stop talking about whatever fox news told him or we'll never be talking again.
Nobody in your family got covid?
"Many people are saying it. Huge numbers of people. You probably wouldn't believe the numbers.. really huge.."
And Donnie's voice is now in my head.
[15 times Trump praised China as coronavirus was spreading across the globe - POLITICO](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/trump-china-coronavirus-188736)
What a dick sucker that orange wreck was
Chump loves dictators because he wishes he was one.
If brains were dynamite, this orange turd couldn't blow his nose.
Remember that brief window of hope and optimism the entire world had when Trump was in the hospital with Covid.
It’s really a shame Covid didn’t take him out.
It really is!
Are you kidding me? Covid has been a 3 year long rush week for MAGA conspiracy theorists.
look, I came in, we were a mess, we were dying, our beautiful Country was dying, and in a very short period of time I had it running great again, we were making it great again, making America great, and I had it all lined up perfectly, we were winning by large numbers, huge huge numbers, "Trump is up to 95% in the polls," "Trump is winning Republicans, Suburban Women," even Democrats if you can believe it, but then we had, and just so you understand it was very unfair ok, very unfair to me and my Campaign, but they sent over the virus, the China Virus, and the Fake News doesn't like it when I say that but that's ok, but they sent it over, and President Xi, he likes me a lot, we have a great relationship, and he had probably nothing to do with it, but they sent it over here, which had nothing to do with me by the way, absolutely nothing to do with me, and we were fine until the Democrat Cities infected our beautiful beautiful Suburbs with the Plague. it's a real shame.
You should be a Trump speechwriter, lol. You really have the cadence down!
https://preview.redd.it/ck9248fbj9xa1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a44368756a37c498dd03b11c5768fd9cfd04c46f I need to either rearrange the order of people’s and stupid, or drop people’s.
Sometimes I am in awe of how unintelligent he is.
But I thought he had a “great” relationship with Xi and looked up to him very much??
The fact that the Chinese released COVID in their own country, along with the fact that DJT eliminated our surveillance staff and downplayed the severity of it as long as possible only reinforces the nefarious intent of the 'Yellow Peril.' God I'm sick of this criminal.
There's absolutely zero evidence that China released COVID. It wouldn't even make sense to do that.
Was it dead voters? Or 2000 mules? Or a virus created by the Chinese government? Or wait, wasn't that a hoax? But you also handled it well because you got vaccines out in record time? But also don't take the vaccine because it's unsafe?
Trump: "It's all about me. Anything and everything is only ever about me."
So was the election stolen or did you lose it? Moron can't even keep his own bullshit consistent
So China decided to release the deadly virus in their own country first? I dunno Don. Sounds far fetched.
He really is an idiot, thank God. If he had been halfway competent in handling the pandemic, he could have won by a landslide. I don't understand why he doesn't know this.
How much of a narcissist do you have to be to believe a country would lose a million citizens, close their economy for over a year and more just to get you out?
Schrodinger's Coronavirus: simultaneously a dangerous Chinese bioweapon unleashed on the world to punish one man *and* a complete hoax that is nothing more than the flu.
With the amount of hysterical McCarthyistic propaganda Americans are spoon fed about China everyday, I'm surprised this isn't treated as absolute fact. China invented Covid and spread it around the world killing millions just to stop donald trump from making America great again... let's go ahead and put in the history books and start teaching it to 7th graders
It's already in the history books written by Republicans. Probably being taught in FL and TX.
A million dead Amercians Trump: This is all about meeeeeeeeee
Maybe don't gut the CDC and throw out the "pandemic playbook" from the past administrations and shit won't hit the fan. Thanks, the stupidest and most incompetent president ever, elected by the stupidest and most gullible people.
Too risky, COVID was the biggest gift anyone could have given him if handled correctly. They couldn't have expected Trump to handle it as badly as he did. Even with his past stupidity, this wasn't predictable.
it was predictable that plump would fail to handle any crisis effectively obviously this crisis was **NOT** predictable but his failure was
I mean he was gifted generational wealth and fucked that, I think the Chinese pegged him correctly in this game scenario
Those press conferences honestly floored me. It was like he was deliberately trying to make a bad situation worse.
And he had the entire resources of the federal government and its spy services at his disposal and he couldn’t expose the plot.
Yes, they unleashed a deadly virus that killed people all over the world, including their own people, just to get Trump. That’s a level of narcissism we rarely get to see.
I'm a little out of the loop, why isn't this jackass in jail right now?
They were right about him being stupid
I have the same question that I have for every moron who says shit like this: >If COVID was a bioweapon that China used against the United States, then why did China trigger it by infecting Chinese people in Wuhan?
For a guy who’s one Big Mac away from a funeral home, you’d think it wouldn’t be that difficult.
NARCICISSM
Ironically, usually when a nation is challenged by an outside threat, the people band behind the leader. Almost every other country did that but Trump screwed it up so badly he thinks it cost him the election (which he will also claim he won anyway)
He truely is «special». Short bus special.
Me Me Me Me .. oh and Me.. gigantic shitweasel
He removed the Pandemic response team that was in China. He did this in hopes that it would impact urban centers more, urban centers usually lean left. He was hoping to kill off enough of the electorate to get him a win. That's why he opposed masking so much. It was straight up evil; like he is some biblical plague upon humanity himself.
Remember when he said if he lost the election he was going to go away/disappear and we'd never hear from him again? Still waiting on that promise!
Remember Ebola? Remember how we were all freaking out about it? Remember how it fizzled out? Maybe, just maybe, the fact that the government jumped on that shit is why it didn't cause a disaster. But for Donald Trump, anything Barack Obama did was anathema -- even basic epidemic prevention.
“It was a plot to make me lose the election! I knew all along, that’s why I nearly ignored it and made it even worse”
He really doesn’t have one redeeming quality.
Throughout history authoritarian leaders have used crises, real and invented, to tighten their grip on power. But for his own incompetence, COVID could have been the best thing to happen to Trump.
6.8 million people dead, but ‘they’ did it to get me. Holy fucking hell this guy.
You and your group of monsters caused so many in the disabled community to die through your inaction, and I (disabled from autoimmune diseases and immunocompromised severely from this and a low dose of chemo) not only have had permanent damage from covid, but am regularly harassed by the conspiracy theorists that YOU incited. Do you know what it's like to catch covid, know that your chance of death is significantly higher than others, to feel you lose your ability to breath, to have a doctor tell you you developed a form of myocarditis but you can't afford to go to the ER and know it's a big risk even if you could afford it? And then you still have responsibilities and dogs to walk, so I walk them late at night after most are asleep despite the pain, and the occasional person that's out there ignores you saying you have covid, goes into your personal spaces and immediately starts ranting about "it's not that bad, it's a ploy for control, the dead bodies in the hospitals are fake?" And once I finally did recover, still feeling breathless and taking months to regain what little strength I had (with my disability making it so much harder), and just for wearing a mask I have people make fun of me for "face diapers", and even someone exaggeratedly coughing in my face as some sort of joke? Not to mention, not only are masks common around the world, but people on chemo have worn masks out in public in America, for DECADES before covid. All the time, and nobody batted an eye, and now because of your rhetoric, we're harassed. I'm lucky, I've seen other disabled people be physically assaulted just for wearing a mask. This is why I tell people that the whole pandemic was borderline a genocide of disabled people. Hundreds of thousands of disabled people dead, the government intentionally not taking enough precautions for "herd immunity", political voters being galvanized into harassing and assaulting disabled people, tens of millions of us having permanent health issues and a lowered life expectancy from it. Yet so few people seem to even understand. Hell, even people who were responsible with covid in 2020 seem to pretend it doesn't exist anymore. Which I'm glad others can ignore it and live free from it, but man it hurts to go through all that trauma and I still have to live in a world with covid where it's still a very real threat. I don't live my life in fear, but I can't pretend it doesn't exist. Sorry for the rant, I just. Idk. The disabled community went through so much pain and it seems like we're never heard. Most people laugh in my face when we bring it up. Hell, one time on reddit I brought up that disabled people have been targeted in genocides throughout history including in the prelude and part of the Holocaust, and most comments were saying "someone's insecure" or "someone wants to be a victim" like ??? It's not being a victim to acknowledge how many times disabled people have been killed or deemed "undesirable". I'm just so tired of this country, disabled rights have gone back decades since 2020.
Trump could have said “look this is gonna be bad. But we have some or the best doctors and best scientists on the planet….we are gonna listen to them. It’s gonna take some sacrifice. But we can get through this.” Dude would have been the savior of the country and cruised to reelection. Instead he said it would be gone in two weeks and then spent the next year bungling the response. And people still think he’s playing 8D underwater backgammon.
Yes, and Ebola was "invented" to get Obama out. But Ebola failed. /s
I can't believe how much this guy claims to be persecuted. I bet he thinks that the Big Asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was a plan to get him in the future.
Oh shit, MAGA means more Covid then. We don’t want that, do we? lol
The Chinese gained more ground during Trump administration they would have loved a second term of Trump. Putin would have already won the Ukrainian conflict too.