The media never held Trump responsible for a mass
atrocity
The failure
to hold Trump accountable for one of the worst instances of civilian mass
deaths in U.S. history stands among the greatest failures of American media.
Opinion by
Columnist
Oct. 26, 2020 at 8:45 a.m. CDT
The
mainstream media have fallen short in covering President Trump in many respects
— from playing along as if
he were sane and coherent, to
perpetuating false moral equivalences between Trump and his opponents, to
refusing to call his lies “lies.” That’s how we get coverage of the final
presidential debate that praises Trump for not interrupting rather than making
clear that Trump showed indifference to the deaths of more than 222,000
Americans because of covid-19. Somehow that accurate, verifiable statement is
verboten in straight news coverage.
The
most extraordinary failure in presidential history — the attempt to disguise
and downplay the deaths of more Americans than all the U.S. military deaths from World War I,
the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined — has not been laid at Trump’s
feet. Put aside criminal law for now; this is a moral crime of unimaginable
dimensions that should never be erased from the records of Trump and his
enablers. What’s more, it is still going on.
Trump’s
refusal to tell the American people that the novel coronavirus was a
deadly airborne virus far worse than the flu, as he told The Post’s Bob Woodward,
followed by his effort to goad governors into opening their states’ economies
early, his disdain for masks and social distancing, and his recklessness in
holding rallies and unmasked events needlessly exposed Americans to death and
illness.
In the
closing days of his campaign, Trump is still holding mass rallies that have
left a trail of infection. We now learn
a coverup was underway to conceal the extent of an outbreak among Vice
President Pence’s staff. The New York Times reports, “Mark Meadows,
the White House chief of staff, portrayed an outbreak among Vice President Mike
Pence’s close advisers as a matter of medical privacy that White House
officials were right to try to keep from the public.” Meadows’s excuse that
Pence was engaged in “essential” work and therefore exempt from health
guidelines is false:
The
C.D.C. guidelines allow “critical infrastructure workers” to continue working
after a coronavirus exposure as long as they are asymptomatic. Campaigning,
however, is not essential work. The guidelines also state clearly that a
critical worker who has been exposed to the virus should “wear a face mask at
all times,” among other precautions.
Mr. Pence appeared
without a mask at a rally in Tallahassee, Fla., on Saturday, and some in the
crowd were also maskless. Mr. Trump’s supporters also rarely wear masks at his
rallies.
The
mentality remains: Ignore the science, cover up the danger and risk others’
lives. The Post reports, “With
the election a little over a week away, the new White House outbreak
spotlighted the administration’s failure to contain the pandemic as
hospitalizations surge across much of the United States and daily new cases hit
all-time highs.” In short, “The outbreak around Pence, who chairs the White House’s
coronavirus task force, undermines the argument Trump has been making to voters
that the country is ‘rounding the turn,’ as the president put it at a rally
Sunday in New Hampshire.”
Even
more damning, we now hear a confession straight from the lips of the
president’s chief of staff: The administration is not even trying to control
the pandemic and reduce infections and deaths. “We’re not going to control the
pandemic,” Meadows said. “We are going to control the fact that we get
vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigations.”
Former
vice president Joe Biden responded in a written statement. "This wasn’t a
slip by Meadows, it was a candid acknowledgment of what President Trump’s
strategy has clearly been from the beginning of this crisis: to wave the white
flag of defeat and hope that by ignoring it, the virus would simply go away,”
he said. “It hasn’t, and it won’t.”
In
other words, they are indifferent to the deaths that occur before we get a
vaccine and silver-bullet therapeutics. They apparently do not care that
about 100,000 more Americans could die by
the end of the year. This is
simply monstrous.
A new
report from Columbia University found, “Through
comparative analysis and applying proportional mortality rates, we estimate
that at least 130,000 deaths and perhaps as many as 210,000 could have been
avoided with earlier policy interventions and more robust federal coordination
and leadership.” Those deaths are on Trump’s hands.
Traveling
in Michigan, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala D. Harris unloaded on
Trump. “They are admitting defeat. … This is the greatest failure of any
presidential administration in the history of America.” She added, “We are
breaking records for the number of people that are contracting a deadly virus,
and this administration fails to take personal responsibility or responsibility
in terms of leading the nation through this dangerous and deadly mass casualty
event. And that’s why they have forfeited their right to a second term in
office.”
In the
bizarre effort to maintain “balance,” the mainstream media have failed to press
the question to Trump: “Aren’t you responsible for possibly hundreds of
thousands of deaths because you never wanted to admit failure?”
Furthermore,
soft-peddling the direct consequence of Trump’s pandemic denial gives cover to
Republican politicians and pundits who still defend his presidency and even
back his reelection. The question for them is: “How are tax cuts or Supreme
Court justices worth the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives?” That is a
question that should haunt them forever.
We talk
about presidential blunders that lead to unnecessary wars, holding them
politically and morally account for massive loss of life. Yet in peacetime, we
do not apply that same exacting judgment to Trump. You would think the death of
thousands upon thousands of Americans would top every story and be addressed in
every interview with an administration figure and fellow Republicans.
The failure
to hold Trump accountable for one of the worst instances of civilian mass
deaths in U.S. history stands among the greatest failures of American media.
