Interviewing Republicans and/or Trump supporters is like interviewing the devoted parents of a criminal. No matter how guilty or how much evidence exist they will always say, ‘oh no not my child!’ It took a moment to calm down before I decided to put pen to paper, or in this case fingers to keyboard to express cogently my anger today. Yesterday, the President of the United States, in the midst of potentially one of the most dangerous pandemics in history, responded to hospital shortages of protective masks and gowns by asking, “Are they going out the back door?” He then elaborated on his obvious insinuation, “How do you go from 10 to 20 to 300,000? Ten to 20,000 masks to 300,000. Even though this is different. Something’s going on. And you ought to look into it as reporters. Where are the masks going?" So somebody should probably look into that,” he said.
My neighbor is a nurse and we have spoken in the past about the rigors of her job. She goes out on every scheduled shift, whether it be morning, evening or night, and now walks willingly into what could be a death scenario. Not knowing who or how many patients will walk into her hospital either sick from, or carrying the coronavirus takes more courage than I have. Her first defense is essentially an impermeable paper filter mask, called an N95, generally costing less than a dollar per unit, but because of demand, they are now selling for as much as seven dollars. It takes a special person to wittingly risk their lives for others. It also takes a scoundrel of the first magnitude to accuse them of theft.
I have a friend in DC who is a pulmonary technician and chose to separate himself from his wife and children for the past 3 weeks for fear of transmitting the virus. The leader of the free world, the man who has labeled himself the wartime president, in effect accused both of my friends and his frontline troops of thievery. I have listened as patiently as I could over the years as Mr. Trump has insulted, belittled, lied and probably contributed to the corruption of our election process. This current iteration of his cruelty surpasses even the evilest of imaginations. After that initial wave of anger and screaming expletives in my head subsided, I realized this is not a thought he consciously constructed, his inherent larceny is his motivation. Mr. Trump thinks like a thief, reacts like a conman and cannot conceive of unselfishness. So naturally, his first thought is theft and avarice.
As proof of the infectious, insidious and burrowing nature of such thinking, Florida Senator, Republican Marco Rubio, accused the press of being gleeful in their reporting of the numbers of U.S. coronavirus cases. Tweeting:
Some in our media can’t contain their glee & delight in reporting that the U.S. has more #CoronaVirus cases than #China
Beyond being grotesque, its bad journalism
We have NO IDEA how many cases China really has but without any doubt it's significantly more than why they admit to
Mr. Rubio sent out this tweet on the heels of CBS news journalists, Maria Mercader and NBC technician Larry Edgeworth both dying as a result of the Covid-19 infection. Maybe the real infection in our society is the thinking of the Republican party.
Vote in 2020 for Change.
