[conspire] deaths from COVID

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

>  I hope you slept well despite the Martian sky.   
> 
> Yesterday's news had sound-bytes of the Donald himself saying that the
> virus was deadly, but he didn't want to create a panic.
> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-admits-downplaying-virus-but-told-woodward-it-was-deadly/

Yeah, after all, that's Our Donald:  Forever projecting a spirit of
calmness and peace, unruffling feathers and reassuring people wherever
he goes, amirite?

I mean, Ghu Forbid that he'd ever foment fear over anything, or spread
dark rumours about exaggerated or imaginary dangers.  Not Our Donald.
Hah, _him_ an agent of chaos who attempts a strategy of using fear to
encourage dependence on him among slackjawed followers looking for an
authoritarian strongman?  Nope, certainly not.

Yes, I absolutely _totally_ believe that he deliberately disregarded for
the sake of his conduct of office everything qualified world experts
told him starting in _January_ about the burgeoning disaster, even
though he says he understood and believed them:  It was all about not
creating a panic.  That's the reason just under two hundred thousand
(and counting) needless deaths and over six million cases have occurred
unlike in competently administered countries with adult, competent
politicians like Merkel:  Because it would be just _terrible_ if those
two hundred thousand people, in addition to being dead, were also
panicky.  Just imagine!

Sure, _of course_ we should believe this post-hoc excuse.  Because
reasons.


Relevant to Mr. Trump's high inherent credibility and world-famous
truthfulness, here's something I posted to Skeptic a few days back:


---<begin snip>---

Quoting Laurie Forbes (laforbes at telus.net):

> I dunno but I doubt he will see prison time - will probably croak or
> become mentally incompetent (more-so) before the appeals are
> exhausted.
>
> In any case here's another reason to throw the bastard in jail:
>
> When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne
> American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the
> last-minute decision, saying that "the helicopter couldn't
> fly" and that the Secret Service wouldn't drive him there.
> Neither claim was true.
>
> Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair
> would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe
> it important to honor American war dead, according to four people
> with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a
> conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the
> scheduled visit, Trump said, "Why should I go to that cemetery?
> It's filled with losers." In a separate conversation on the same
> trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 Marines who lost their
> lives at Belleau Wood as "suckers" for getting killed.
>
> https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/

My Uncle Ray was in the Marine Corps, which is sufficient reason for my
blood to boil when I read the disgusting truth behind the Toddler's
failure to show up at Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, at the foot of
Belleau Wood.

But we really ought to have learned, by now, that the man is simply a
pathological liar -- always has been, always will be.

Perhaps one of the reasons I was never fooled by the Toddler is that I
grew up with a pathological liar, i.e., my sister Michele, and so
recognised the type when I saw it in the Orange One.  Once you have such
a person assessed as such, you make a point of mentally filing as
'unconfirmed' anything and everything the person says, with no
exceptions, and then you're never fooled again.

(The Toddler's adamant denial of this story isn't going to cut it, this
time, even among people who haven't gotten the memo about pathological
liars:  It was immediately confirmed, in less than a day, and in every
detail, by multiple serving military people.)

---<end snip>---


Hey, wait, what's that bird landing nearby?  Look at the beautiful
plumage!  Oh, wait, that's not a bird after all, that's the Irony Fairy.

   But reporting at the time revealed Trump’s motivations for wanting to
   avoid panic in January and February to be far more nuanced.  The
   president was fixated during that time not on leadership virtues but
   on the stock market, which he has long seen as a barometer of his
   reelection chances.  He was strongly averse to any government
   announcement that might scare investors into a sell-off, his advisers
   explained.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-woodward-coronavirus-panic/2020/09/10/5376cd7c-f375-11ea-999c-67ff7bf6a9d2_story.html

Those advisors!  Such jokers.  Well, surely _they_ must be lying.  I
mean, it couldn't be Our Donald doing so.  Nope.  Never.

-- 
Cheers,                 "My hot flight attendant asked how I like my coffee.  
Rick Moen               And that's when she told me:  'That's cute, honey, but 
rick at linuxmafia.com     the coffee's free.  You don't have to pay for it, here."
McQ! (4x80)                                            (seen on Twitter)