I understand that the Cult of Trump members will defend him no matter what.
Screamin Scott wrote:
So, you would rather set a panic situation into the populace?
I would rather someone who is supposed to be leading the country to lead the country.
Facts don't create panic; facts help people to do the right thing.
Trump's denial of the facts is costing people their lives; he wasted time downplaying the severity of the coronavirus.
He wasted time when he could have been mobilizing against the pandemic.
"President Trump expressed skepticism Thursday night that the worst-case coronavirus pandemic scenarios would come to pass in the U.S., telling Fox News' "Hannity" that "I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they're going to be."
"I don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators," Trump told host Sean Hannity, an apparent reference to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's recent claim that the state needed 30,000 ventilators.
"You know, you go into major hospitals sometimes and they'll have two ventilators and now all of a sudden they're saying, 'Can we order 30,000 ventilators?"
March 30 2020
As of Monday morning, the U.S. death toll was over 2,500. More than 143,000 people have tested positive in the U.S. — almost a fifth of the roughly 723,000 cases worldwide.
"A Christian evangelist who mocked the response to the novel coronavirus pandemic has died after likely being infected while preaching on the streets of New Orleans. The city has been hard hit during the pandemic and the recent Mardi Gras celebrations have fueled transmission rates for both tourists and residents.
Landon Spradlin, who ran a musical Christian ministry, took his family with him to New Orleans to “wash it from its Sin and debauchery.” Spradlin became ill while traveling home to Virginia with his wife.
The minister tested positive for COVID-19. He was one of the first people from Virginia to die of the infection.
Spradlin was likely already infected when he posted a misleading meme comparing death rates for COVID-19 and swine flu. The meme claimed that coverage of the ongoing pandemic was a political attack on Donald Trump."
"The decision by the school’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr., to partly reopen his evangelical university enraged residents of Lynchburg, Va. Then students started getting sick.
Mr. Falwell — a staunch ally of President Trump and an influential voice in the evangelical world — reopened the university last week, igniting a firestorm.
As of Friday, Dr. Eppes said, nearly a dozen Liberty students were sick with symptoms that suggested Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.
Three were referred to local hospital centers for testing. Another eight were told to self-isolate.
For critical weeks in January and February, the nation’s far right dismissed the seriousness of the pandemic. Mr. Falwell derided it as an “overreaction” driven by liberal desires to damage Mr. Trump."
"Two of the top doctors advising President Trump on the coronavirus pandemic warned on Sunday that as many as 200,000 Americans could die during the outbreak, even with much of the country already under stay-at-home orders and practicing social distancing.
The figures convinced President Trump to extend social distancing guidelines through the end of April, a stark reversal on earlier comments that the country would be back to normal by Easter.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a White House briefing that the grim projection on the number of deaths was based on scientific modeling and that the forecasts had convinced Mr. Trump to extend the restrictions."
You can see some in the Cult of Trump will deflect and defend him no matter what.
They are unable because of their fears and insecurities to understand the difference between truth and lies.
[quote=JohnFrim]Arch, how can you even ask such a stupid question? Choosing to ignore Trump's lies/falsehoods is one thing, but denying their existence is just blind ignorance.[/quote
I think that many in the Cult of Trump actually know that Trump is a bald faced liar but just decide to ignore it.
They see him as someone that will protect them from the big bad world.
They don't/won't realize that he is only using them to profit and feed his ego.
Then there are those that are unable to discern the difference between truth and lies.
"That was the old religion, and it’s mostly gone. Even newspapers are mostly gone. Most “information” is now carried on the internet and social media platforms. TV news is divided substantially between righty and lefty shows. There are winners and losers in the new information economy, but one of the biggest losers has been the old religion about the importance of basic factual accuracy and what used to be called “balance.”
I’m sentimental for the old system, even while acknowledging its shortcomings. I’m horrified by what has replaced it, which has quintupled the old demons called “selective perception” and “confirmation bias.”
There’s a part of human nature that, rather than wanting to know what’s accurate and true, wants to believe certain things, whether true or not.
I’m not one who thinks Donald Trump is a genius, but if he is a genius, his genius is rooted in his understanding of that above-referenced feature (or bug) of human nature.
It’s not that he’s clever about it. He’s blatant. He lies all the time. In the age of fact-checkers, his lies are easily and quickly identified and publicized. But this easy access to a catalog of his lies has no apparent influence on the bond between him and the roughly 40 percent of the electorate that supports him or at least “approves” of him, as measured by approval polls."
https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2020/02/its-hard-to-understand-trump-supporters-willingness-to-excuse-his-blatant-falsehoods/
LWW wrote:
What should he do?
He could use the buying power of the United States to purchase and distribute supplies where needed; that would take away the competition between states to buy supplies. States are having to compete not only with other states but with other countries.
He could compel companies to produce the number of ventilators that the critically ill are going to need; not to mention face masks etc.
He could donate his hotel space and rooms as emergency hospitals.
He could listen to the health experts and stop wishing and hoping for a solution.
He could actually act like a president.