The single biggest reason Donald Trump is unfit to be President of the United States
First I would like to pay tribute to the 1,047 Americans who have needlessly died since I last wrote to you yesterday, brothers and sisters. These were mothers, sisters, husbands, sons, friends and family who are no longer with us. These needless deaths are all thanks to the red-handed, stochastic terrorist and murderer currently usurping the sacred People’s House.
As I write this, of the more than 9 million Americans who have contracted coronavirus, 234,177 have died. That’s almost 20 percent of the world’s deaths from Covid-19 from a country with only 4.2% of the world’s population. A recent study from Columbia university found that 210,000 of those American deaths could have been avoided. There was only one person in America who had the power to avoid those deaths. Donald Trump. So if Donald Trump had done his job, 24,000 Americans would have died from COVID-19 instead of 234,177.
But Donald Trump is no Jacinda Ardern. Jacinda Ardern is the Prime Minister of New Zealand. She took coronavirus seriously from the beginning and enacted a nationwide lockdown and the widest ranging and toughest border restrictions of any country in the world. But even more than this, she earned the respect of her citizens because she was compassionate and caring and concerned with one thing and one thing alone, saving the lives of her people. That is why only 25 of her citizens (as I write this) have died from coronavirus. Adjusted for population, that is the equivalent of 1,650 Americans. Clearly, Ms. Ardern outdid the Columbia university study.
Meanwhile the White House science office has listed “ending Covid-19” as one of the top achievements of the Trump administration’s first term. I don’t think anyone would be surprised to learn that this pronouncement came directly from Donald Trump. That it came at the peak of a pandemic that is getting worse by the day is, of course, a metric of how completely divorced from reality this toxic psychopath Trump is. The first question that comes to mind is, if “ending the pandemic” is a great Trump achievement, why is “operation Warp Speed” still desperately seeking a vaccine that is supposed to be “coming any day now”?
This glaring inconsistency is endemic to a White House that not only lies all the time but does it badly. For example, recently the White House announced that the 525 children in cages were separated from their immigrant parents because their parents didn’t want them any more. But how did the White House know that those parents didn’t want their children if they couldn’t find those parents in the first place? Is it a measure of how contemptuous this White House is of the constituency that they tell these transparent lies, or are they simply too lazy and incompetent to think it through? Maybe both.
This out-of-control incompetence has had deadly effect on the American populace. It’s estimated that at least 150,000 more Americans will needlessly die between now and noon on January 20th when Donald Trump is, hopefully, finally out of office. I think that number is low. I hope not. In any case it is an infuriating frustration that there isn’t a single thing any of us can do about it. The carnage of fifty more 9/11 deaths will occur between now and January and none of us can stop it.
What we can do is vote, and make sure this diseased juggernaut of death and sorrow is removed from the White House as soon as humanly possible. There are a million reasons why Donald Trump is unfit to be president of the United States, this has been another one. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.