AMA comes out swinging against Donald Trump
Donald Trump has always been quick to hurl insults at groups of people he doesn’t like, even when doing so will almost certainly cost him politically. Smart and stable presidential candidates focus on keeping such impulses in check to avoid self-inflicted wounds especially in the final stretch of a heated election season. Trump, however, just can’t restrain himself, and it’s obvious that no one around him has figured out how to do it, either.
Trump’s latest rant is against doctors, of all people. Even as the pandemic grows deadlier under his colossally inept and corrupt “leadership,” Trump insisted at a Michigan rally Friday night that “doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID,” citing “like $2,000 more” per incident. He pointed out that “our doctors are very smart people,” and so they are being greedy by allegedly falsely listing COVID-19 as the cause of death for many patients.
Trump introduced this depraved conspiracy theory at an earlier rally in Wisconsin last weekend, when he said that doctors and hospitals “get more money” if they commit malpractice by artificially inflating the number of coronavirus deaths. His decision to double down on this perverse lunacy at yesterday’s rally prompted the American Medical Association (AMA) to come out swinging.
In a brief statement, AMA President Susan R. Bailey lambasted Trump without caring to mention the vile cretin’s name. She wrote that the idea of doctors in a pandemic “overcounting COVID-19 patients or lying to line their pockets,” as Trump accuses, “is a malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided charge.” On the contrary, “frontline health care workers have risked their health, their safety and their lives to treat their patients and defeat a deadly virus,” Bailey explained. “They did it because duty called and because of the sacred oath they took.”
In September, former White House Coronavirus Task Force member Olivia Troye revealed in a video that Trump suggested at a meeting that COVID-19 is a “good thing” because it means he doesn’t have to shake hands with “disgusting people,” referring to his own base. The Atlantic also reported that multiple sources have heard Trump disparage American service members, calling them “losers” and “suckers.” And then there is former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, whose new book, Disloyal, recalls Trump saying, “Can you believe that bullshit? Can you believe people believe that bullshit?” after leaving a 2016 Trump Tower meeting with top evangelical leaders who helped him win the election.
By insulting everyone around him, Trump continues to fall in the polls while taking his failed Republican Party down with him. If the only person whose company Trump can stand is himself, then a lonely prison cell might just be the right fit for him after all. Before we get ahead of ourselves and ponder the criminal trials that may await Trump in 2021, let’s keep our focus in these final days on doing everything possible to make sure both Trump and Trumpism get drowned in a massive blue wave on Election Day.
Ron Leshnower is a lawyer and the author of several books, including President Trump’s Month