This just keeps getting uglier
It probably should’ve been taken as a bad sign when the Trump campaign required people to sign a waiver before entering a packed auditorium for Donald Trump’s campaign kickoff rally in Tulsa last week. It not only ensured that turnout would be much lower than anything Brad Parscale and the campaign hyped up, but it would be an admission that not only is Donald Trump lying about the nature of COVID-19 and his administration hasn’t even tried to contain it – that his followers are denying reality at a perilous cost. City officials in Tulsa repeatedly asked the Trump campaign to cancel the rally to no avail and we have yet to see how many people will suffer from this one reckless act alone.
Sure, Donald Trump will blame everyone else for anyone who falls ill if he thinks about it at all, just as his campaign has blamed other people for his rally being less than stellar, but the real problem isn’t going away. We speculated that if Donald Trump couldn’t draw a large crowd in a solid red state he’s expected to win easily, it wouldn’t bode well for his ability to campaign in swing states like Arizona and Florida. It’s even harder to campaign there now that COVID-19 cases are rising, and Mike Pence has made no secret of that.
His spokespeople announced that he’s not doing campaign events in those states even though on Friday, Pence was on television announcing that the virus’ spreading was effectively curbed. Now the head of the coronavirus task force can no longer hide behind the lies and it makes you wonder how much worse the Trump campaign will look in the coming months as even some of the people in Trump’s base finally realize they’ve been lied to.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making