Watching his approval numbers drop, and desperate to kick start his reelection bid, malignant narcissist and bleach-injection advocate Donald "COVID Donnie" Trump has decided to go full bore to encourage businesses to reopen, trashing his own recently issued guidelines. In Arizona yesterday, on a mission to save his slavish acolyte Sen. Martha "McSnarly" McSally and do a photo op at a mask factory, Trump shrugged off the potential of a resurgence of the virus, clearly placing his own political fortunes first:
“We have to get our country back, you know, people are dying the other way too when you look at what's happened with drugs, it goes up, when you look at suicides,” Trump said. “I mean take a look at what's going on. People are losing their jobs. We have to bring it back and that's what we're doing.”We know that Trump doesn't care about the suicides or overdoses, he thinks that getting back to "normal" quickly, against the dire warnings of epidemiologists and medical experts, will get him reelected. A devastating second wave resulting from the relaxation of the very guidelines that his administration issued is more than likely, something he'll blame on governors when it happens.
At the same time, he announced that his coronavirus task force is winding down, just as COVID-19 cases are increasing in other states. His hijacking of their press briefings proved to be disastrous, as he spewed dangerous nonsense which had to be corrected later by medical experts, and because he's looking to pass the buck for future failures. Taken together, this points to an emerging political gaslighting project of immense proportions and dishonesty as part of his reelection campaign.
BONUS: Signalling peak irony, "Live and Let Die," performed by Axl Rose, was playing in the background while COVID Donnie pretended to care about masks:
(photo: Dear Leader in Arizona yesterday, essentially saying "what have you got to lose but your lives?" Evan Vucci / AP)
