When Does Trump get his Apology?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
T he fullness of time, and now the Omicron wave, have made it obvious how preposterously over-the-top and unfair the chief lines of criticism against Donald Trump were during the pandemic.
It has been said, over and over, that Trump almost single-handedly killed thousands upon thousands of Americans. Chris Hayes a couple of months ago called for a truth-and-reconciliation-commission-type inquiry into how Trump “willfully got hundreds of thousands of people killed.” Willfully ! Whoopi Goldberg opined that “this blood is on his hands.”
During one of the presidential debates last year, Biden said of Trump , “Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.”
Why, then, does Biden get to stay in office? Tragically, about as many people have died of Covid this year as in 2020. This doesn’t make for an apples-to-apples comparison — Biden only took office in late January, and any policy changes would take time to show up in real-world results — but it speaks to how neither a Republican nor Democratic president has been able to stop this plague
Indeed, if you simply look at the progression of cases and deaths in the U.S. over time, you’d have no idea that a president promising a radically new approach took office in January 2021. The peaks and troughs have proceeded in keeping with the seasons, the emergence of variants, and other underlying conditions.
That line from Biden in the debate, by the way, wasn’t a one-off; it was one of the main themes of his presidential campaign. “If this president is reelected, we know what will happen,” Biden said of Trump in his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention last year. “Cases and deaths will remain far too high.”
He continued, “Just look around. It’s not this bad in Canada or Europe or Japan, or almost anywhere else in the world.” As I pointed out in a column in Politico last week, though, the U.S. has had more cases on a per-capita basis than Europe, Canada, and Japan in 2021, and more deaths.
Is that Joe Biden’s fault this year, the way it was Donald Trump’s last year?
There are obviously legitimate criticisms of Trump on Covid, from the initial testing snafu, to his extreme, repeated overpromising about when the virus would disappear, to his hostility to masks when they were, whatever their shortfalls, a better option than lockdowns, to his generally wild, poorly informed statements.
But none of these produced mass death, unless you believe we could have tested and traced the virus into oblivion at the outset, which seems unlikely given the scale of the outbreaks here.
And, on the other side of the ledger, Trump helped develop the vaccines, a world-historical event.
A Democratic defense of Biden is that his Covid response has been sabotaged by Republicans’ refusing to get vaccinated. This is, no doubt, part of the story.
It’s made the pandemic worse that 15 percent of adults haven’t gotten even one shot, and 27 percent aren’t fully vaccinated. But when comparing Trump and Biden, it’s important to remember that for almost all of 2020, there were no vaccines at all .
Is it better to be president of the United States at a time a novel virus comes to our shores that we know nothing about, don’t know how best to treat, and have no vaccines for? Or to be president nearly a year later, when vaccines have come online and we know much more?
The answer, clearly, is the latter. Under Biden, 243 million people have received one dose of a vaccine. Up until the very end of the year, zero people had in 2020.
As for the uptake of the vaccines, if Trump had won a second term, surely there would be more Democratic suspicion about the vaccines than there is now — and that presumably would have been blamed on him. But we are a big, varied, continental country with a low level of trust in our institutions and authorities. We weren’t, say, high-trust Denmark when Trump was president, and we aren’t Denmark now.
In that convention speech, by the way, Biden promised, “We’ll develop and deploy rapid tests with results available immediately.” In his Covid plan , he slammed Trump for testing shortages and pledged to implement “widespread” testing and tracing.
Now that there’s a shortage of rapid tests and enormous lines of people desperately seeking tests, Biden explains that the latest wave moved too fast to get in front of. Whatever you think of this explanation, it’s the kind of thing Trump officials said at the outset of the pandemic. It goes to show that it’s possible to be earnest and well-intentioned — as all of Biden’s allies believe he is — and yet get caught flat-footed by the latest permutation of a once-in-a-century event.
This is the possibility that Biden and his supporters were never willing to admit existed while Trump was in office. The suffering and death were never attributed chiefly to the virus itself; the bureaucratic mistakes never attributed to well-meaning people struggling within outdated systems in trying circumstances; the policy disagreements never attributed to sincere differences about how best to try to get out of the pandemic and where the balance should be struck between restrictions to control the virus and their inevitable downsides.
No, it was just all chalked up, like in the Chris Hayes segment above, to near-criminality.
If this is the standard, Biden, too, has “blood on his hands.” Of course, alleging that would be simplistic and absurd — not that that stopped anyone when Trump was in charge.
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Will Biden live up to his own standard and resign?
Of course not. No one believes Biden has principles.
But in a healthy country, the people who lobbed hysterical attacks against Trump for "murdering people" would probably reflect on how insane their partisan hatred made them and learn to use common sense and follow the science before politicizing a virus. But that of course, will never happen either.
My answer to when Trump will get his apology is never. Unless he wants to apologize first for being the worst president in 245 year history of the United States. of America. This is not a joke. Donald Trump was recorded is lying to the American people approximately 30000 times while he was President of the United States. He tried to blackmail the president of another country into helping him win the 2020 election by smearing his opposition. He tried to steal the 2020 election. He is a terrible human being. He is a lifelong crook liar bigot cheat and moron.He needs to apologize to the American people although we all know he never will
Sorry John, but Uncle Joe is fast proving himself to be the equal of what is claimed about Trump. Trump did a lot of questionable things in office and I am no Trump supporter, but I dislike Biden and the hard core liberal left a lot more than Trump. Worst president? By the time Biden's term in office is over, if he makes it that far, I look to see Joe far surpass Trump as the worst president this country has ever had!
Well Ed that is some wide-ass speculation. You just make 'forecasting' weird. Generally, we're told, and we tell others, to "hope for the best." You throw all that positivity for the future out! You have already summed up Biden's four years in one year's projection. That is about the most ridiculous summary I have ever heard anybody attempt! And you 'promise' it won't be worse than the individual who indirectly aided in the death of Ashley Babitt at the Capitol. Donald Trump has never apologized for his role in her death directly or indirectly. He only tried to exploit it for his own selfish purposes to solicit funds and assent from her associates at large! A most disgusting development.
Ridiculousl
Agree to disagree.
Sorry you think so. But I expected nothing different.
You don't like what other people think so you become insulting when they don't share your views? I expected better from you CB. I guess I was wrong.
Ed, you called an "Agree to Disagree." Thus, I can not comment on said topic (of discussion) with you further. We will have to move on and pick up somewhere else in other ways. (Smile.)
thread 2.1 is locked, agree to disagree was called so that ends it here between Ed and CB, don't want a violation here
Welcome back!
This would be 'funny' if it was not so damn serious. Biden 'hit the ground running' against all kinds of obstacles being dropped into a stream of pandemic consciousness and all some losers do is complain, obfuscate, and gripe about what that lying, cheatin, and yes- cause of ruination, misery, AND DEATH of a man who falsely considers it his 'right' to never say sorry about anything - Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is one of the most corrupt human beings I have ever had the misfortune of 'encountering.' I would choose what I know and can discern about Joe Biden every time over what I know and discern about Donald Trump. Apologize to Donald Trump? Only if God directs me too at this point and time!
There's a difference. Trump intentionally played down the virus and made quite a few people think it was a joke, or just some kind of overblown partisan hype that they shouldn't take seriously. I've seen several reports of people angrily arguing with doctors or nurses before dying because they believed Trump's messaging and didn't think Covid was real, or at least not bad enough to kill. Trump is guilty of negligence and dereliction of duty in that regard. He provided about the worst kind of leadership possible in the first year of the pandemic.
Whether anyone likes Biden or not, he simply hasn't done the same thing. He's done the opposite – stressing that people DO take it seriously; that they get vaccinated, boosted, etc., which is exactly what a President should do.
It's a false equivalency. The LAST thing Trump deserves is an apology. What he deserves is an orange jumpsuit, and for more than just the sickening, dismissive Covid performance art that got people killed.
hich is exactly what a President should do.
You've made my point for me. You claim Biden's done everything right, yet more people have died under his watch than Trump, despite the vaccine, despite doctors being more experienced in treating the disease. So since Biden's completely failed to stop the virus despite, in your words, doing everything a President should do, how can Trump be blamed for not achieving what Biden failed to do?
To claim Trump murdered people, as has been widely done on this site and in progressive circles generally is incredibly dishonest. So yeah, falsely claiming someone is guilty of murder generally requires an apology, at least among honest people.
Don't make shit up. I didn't claim that. I said he hasn't been playing the virus down like the last guy did, and that he's been encouraging people to take it seriously and get vaccinated, like a President should.
Trump started with zero infections of the original strain.
Biden started with a raging inferno of virus already present. Then, Delta arrived in March, when few people were vaccinated, and was 2 to 3 times more infectious than the original strain. Omicron has now arrived and may be up to 5 times more infectious than the original strain (judging by estimated R0 factors), and even though vaccines are free and available everywhere now, many people still refuse to get vaccinated.
The vast majority of people still dying from Covid are unvaccinated, and that isn't Biden's fault. He's been encouraging vaccinations and other measures, not playing the situation down and constantly signaling disdain for protective measures like Trump did in 2020.
Making shit up again. I didn't say he's done EVERYTHING a President should do, which would be a subjective claim anyway. One more time, I said he's been encouraging people to take it seriously and to get vaccinated and boosted, which is something a President should do – in stark contrast to the last guy, making the equivalency false.
Trump isn't being blamed for the virus itself, or for people dying from it. Trump is being blamed for the way he handled it publicly; for playing it down and politicizing it. I actually know people who thought it was an overblown fake crisis invented as some kind of Democratic ploy during an election year. People certainly died because they bought into that, possibly tens of thousands or more.
I don't personally know of anyone using the word 'murder', but his public treatment of the virus absolutely contributed to a large number of people not taking it seriously and dying because of that.
I think murder is probably the wrong word, but his bullshit definitely got people killed. Honest people recognize and acknowledge that.
How?
Where? I see no such claim.
As Dig noted (and this is common knowledge so what gives here Sean?), Trump downplayed the virus and Biden has consistently encouraged people to get vaccinated and has worked to ensure sufficient vaccines and boosters are available for all to do so.
Murder is the wrong word. But Trump's downplaying of the virus is significant and negative. Do you dismiss that as irrelevant or do you recognize that this irrational anti-vaccine nonsense grew in part from the rhetoric of Trump early on when he was downplaying the virus? When the PotUS tells people that the virus is not much worse than the flu, what impact does that have?
That is some "stinkin'-thinkin." It stems from your "all or nothing" approach to a democratic president who wants to help grown-ups in American succeed-even when a large contingent of them behave like obstinate brats!
Yes and no.
Yes. When you qualify "doing everything a President should do" - you didn't mean to validate Biden, but you did. Thus, there was nothing left out of "everything." Biden did it all. Surely, you didn't mean that!
NO. President Biden has not attempted or used up options on "everything a President should do" because he is still trying hard to convince American 'losers' to participate in the free and fair exercise of saving their own lives and the lives of their community-at-large (nationally).
Trump didn’t murder anyone, but I don’t care if he gets an apology for people saying he did. The real harm in making such an accusation is that it distracted everyone from dealing with the problem in a more effective way.
I think a lot of the way Trump responded to Covid - early on - was in line with how much of America and even the world reacted. In downplaying the virus, he had company on both ends of the political spectrum. Democrats and Republicans alike were telling people in the first quarter of 2020 to go about their daily lives. It may not have been smart, but I find nothing unusual in politicians trying to tell people that circumstances are not as bad as someone else is saying.
Even as some places started to close in March, there was still plenty of talk about opening up again by summer. And when the cases declined somewhat in summer, many people thought the worst of the pandemic was over, only to be shocked when the holidays came.
We can make the argument that we all should have taken Covid more seriously from Day 1, but I don’t think that is a realistic expectation. Humans are great at denying the probability of things outside their life experience, and nothing like this was previously within the life experience of anyone now alive. I think most of humanity assumed that a pandemic like this simply couldn’t happen in a world with our modern medicine.
And then it all became so politicized. Trump wanted very badly (as any politician does) to protect his brand. He needed people to believe that the bad thing wasn’t happening on his watch. That drove downplaying the virus and elevated any possibilities of treatment.
Meanwhile, his opponents promised that Trump was making it worse and Democrats would make it all better. People should have recognized that as the bullshit that it was, but then again, desperate people will cling to any hope. It’s all dishonest and none of it is new. It should be well established by now that politicians care more about getting elected and reelected than they do about actually solving big problems. But I think maybe people thought this was a big enough problem that they would set those ways aside. They were wrong.
I don’t expect Trump to ever get an apology. I don’t expect any politician to apologize to another. Nor do I expect our partisan media to render any apologies. Not because they aren’t deserved, but because it’s not in their nature to apologize for the wrongs they do.
And anyway, it’s not the politicians who have an apology coming. If anything, it’s regular people who (probably foolishly) put their faith in leaders who promise to solve the big problems, but rarely actually do it.
Depends, I suppose, on where you draw the line on "early on":
There is a political impulse that exists in many people - to varying degrees, of course - to blame the president (whoever he might be) for the current situation. That presumes that the situation would be significantly different than it is but for that person and his action/inaction. But I have seen no data to support that assumption.
So I think it’s hard to support the idea that substantially fewer Americans would have died in 2020 if Trump had said this or that differently. And that’s the real point of this article.
Any reasonable person should be willing to accept that many Americans would have died from Covid in 2020, with or without Trump. Additionally, given that just as many people have died under Biden’s watch - with vaccines, with treatment options, and with massive head starts on testing all available - it can be argued that Biden is doing no better than Trump, and arguably worse.
At this point in the pandemic, for example, is there any excuse for the current shortage in testing supplies?
Why rapid COVID tests are in short supply in the U.S.
I think that when a PotUS downplays a virus that this has the effect of encouraging some to not take the precautions that they should take.
In a nation of ∼330 million people, even a tiny percentage is millions of people. ‘Some’ is a lot of individuals.
Probably, but the same effect might be seen if the Speaker of the House encourages people to visit Chinatown, or the Mayor of New York tells people to live their lives as normal. Like I said, Trump had lots of company on this issue.
Furthermore, it’s clear that many Americans are prone to deliberately rejecting precautions no matter how much political leaders urge them to take those precautions. Electing Biden hasn’t magically induced the population to get vaccinated or stop gathering in large numbers. And before you cite partisanship, let me make two observations.
First, the unvaccinated are not limited to Republicans or even Americans. There might be more unvaccinated Republicans than Democrats, but there are still plenty of the latter. Also, there is vax resistance in many countries.
Second, it is no secret that Trump has been vaccinated and received a booster shot. Every time he mentions it publicly, his own supporters boo him. He is encouraging people to get vaccinated, as are many other Republicans. Of course, I wish it were all of them. In my opinion, none of them are doing as much as I think they could.
It’s not fair to say Trump’s words had an outsized impact in 2020, but none in 2021. Nor is it fair to look at his words while ignoring the words of others. There has to be more to it than that.
All the times Democrats played down Covid 19 at the beginning; called Trump a Xenophobe for his travel ban from China and Europe trying to slow it's spread here; Biden and Harris stated clearly and repeatedly they wouldn't take the "Trump vaccine"; Pelosi held up Covid 19 aid before the elections; and all of the countless times that Democrats ignored their own lock downs and policies, including the President and first lady. But it was all only on Trump.
Yet, many expect us to follow the rules and mandates of these very jackasses.
Trump doesn't deserve an apology; but Democrats damn well sure deserve every condemnation coming their way for sowing discord in order to win election- and being hypocritical fascists.
Let us know when Brandon finally ends the largest super spreader event in the world going on at our southern border. One that he, and the Democrats, created fully on their own. Allowing in over 200,000 illegals a month. The vast majority of them unvaccinated (no mandate to get them vaccinated); only tested if they show signs of covid; kept in overcrowded detention centers with high Covid infection rates; and then transported by the federal government all over the country.
Brandon is absolutely right, “Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.” It is w ay past time for he, and his administration, to be held fully accountable.
Of course, Trump is not the only politician whose words influence others. My point though is that the PotUS is a major league influence on millions of people. In the case of Trump, his downplaying of the virus (especially after he knew of its health risks) influenced people to make very bad decisions regard their own well-being and the well-being of others.
You recognize, I hope, that I said nothing whatsoever about ignoring the words of others and in no way am implying that Trump is the only one to do harm. Trump is my example because he was PotUS during the outbreak of a pandemic and his words thus are highly significant.
First off Taco's, i haven't been on much as of late for certain reasons, but mosyt of what i've read from you makes so much more sense than say a year ago. Congratulations for being able to expand and modify your opinions after reviewing more evidence.
Now on your point attempting to give Trump a pass, as he was the sitting potUS and had a base that hung on his every word (Often known as a LIE), you are back to plain absurd. If Trump HAD NOT AGAIN LIED, i'm absolutely positive, tens of thousands wouldn't have DIED. They believed and hung(not only on January 6th at the Capitol) on his every word (N so MANY WERE LIES), thus makong it VERY LIKELY had he come out with the damn TRUTH, so many more of US, would still be alive, instead, Trump did his shuck and jive, just as he did through his entire pathetic presidency, so he deserrves NO PASS, for his inactions/actions(LYING) caused the death of far too many.,and lead to the mutations, still killing and increasing the dying, cause he had the \chance and the time to save US from much, instead, he spent it biding that time to hide it and such, so as to improve his political advantages in reelection, thus a duty dereliction that he manually did clutch, cause he always automatically LIED, like a Manual override of an already come unglued system, that will NEVER MISS HIM, as he should be locked away , and thus, i'm done here having my say, out
Is it possible to simply focus on a point made without deflecting?
My point was about the president of the USA during a pandemic. If a PotUS (whoever it is) downplays the danger of a virus while knowing said danger, that, I submit, harms the nation. Trump happened to be the PotUS at the time and Trump happened to be the PotUS who downplayed the danger of the virus.
Do you disagree with the point I made?
And when that potUS is Donald Trump, the guy with the following of a cult liter, escaped Quart cheater, the influence he had, could have been down right really GRAPE Kool Aid to save his cult, of personality that he did prove to be, and
what a sad reflection on our once so Great Country and society....
Perhaps because maybe Uncle Joe is giving significant amounts of them to other countries?
I honestly don’t give a shit about giving Trump a pass. I don’t care about blaming him or excusing him for anything. What I see going on with Trump and the pandemic is scapegoating, but I don’t care if it’s mean to Trump or not. That’s not why the scapegoating is bad. The problem with it is that our tendency to do this works counter to us taking responsibility for our lives.
No one has to take responsibility for ignoring precautions if we can just blame it all on Trump. We don’t have to have any respect for the power of nature or disease if we can just blame Trump. All would be sunshine and roses if it weren’t for Trump. That’s worse than partisan and it’s worse than childish. It’s actually destructive.
There is a section of our population that cares more about punishing Donald Trump than preventing disease and death. That makes them just as useless - and just as dangerous - as they think he is.
I didn’t need Donald Trump to tell me Covid was killing people. I didn’t need him to convince me it was highly contagious. Similarly, I didn’t need anyone at the CDC to tell me that face masks inhibit the spread of disease - particularly viruses that infect the lungs. Why? Because I’m a moderately educated grown up with at least a thimble-full of common sense.
Did it though? Honestly, maybe you have data on that, but I don’t. I mean, I’m sure there are some morons in this world who make medical decisions based on what a president says, but I’m definitely not one of those people.
Do you really think there are a lot of people who were inclined to fear the coronavirus and apt to take special precautions but then changed their minds when Trump said it would all be ok by April? I doubt it. I knew he was full of shit the moment he said it.
I think if you’re really that dumb about taking care of yourself, Donald Trump isn’t going to make it worse, and Joe Biden isn’t going to change your mind.
We’re giving presidents (and our resident hillbilly population) way too much credit.
I doubt there are any statistics on something like this Tacos!. I was appealing to common sense. We do know that a PotUS' words are influential; myriad examples of that. We even can deliver examples on the influence that Trump has on 'opinions'. The most obvious one is the fact that tens of millions of people believe that Trump won the election and it was stolen by fraud. Just because he said so.
That should be enough to establish the notion that a PotUS' words are influential. Even when a PotUS makes an obviously ridiculous claim without a shred of evidence and in fact counter to the evidence.
Given the influence, and given the fact that our nation is ~330 million people, I do not think it is a stretch to hold that Trump's downplaying of the virus encouraged millions (1% is 3.3 million) to not take the virus as seriously as they should have and thus make bad decisions regarding their own well-being and the well-being of others.