BREAKING NEWS: The hoax comes home
Sometimes, when you turn the corner, waiting on the other side is a semi right there in your lane barreling toward you. That is what happened to Donald Trump this week when he and the First Lady tested positive for the COVID 19 virus.
The president has spent the last few weeks saying we are getting ahead of the pandemic—turning the corner and leaving it behind. This was the latest version of the big lie the president has been telling the American people on COVID-19 since day one. The form of the lie has morphed from “it’s a hoax by the Democrats” to “cases will go to zero” to “it will disappear like magic” to “it affects almost nobody.” The words changed but the message has stayed the same, both explicitly and implicitly.
No big deal. No need for a national plan, no need to shut down until we are sure we have beaten the virus, open everything regardless, the economy is more important, Wall Street is more important, reelection is most important.
Thus, the president deliberately misled the American people, inducing them to engage in risky, potentially life-ending behavior and to ignore public health precautions. It was not done out of ignorance or even wrongheaded conviction. In a taped conversation in February, a few weeks before the coronavirus pandemic began to ravage the country, Trump told journalist Bob Woodward that the virus was very lethal and transmissible. He also confessed, in a series of interviews, that he had always “downplayed” the virus and would continue to do so.
Although the president tried to protect himself, making sure the staff who regularly come in contact with him were tested frequently, the cavalier attitude he expressed in his public appearances infected many people in the White House and extended to the president himself who went around sans mask and failed to practice social distancing at virtually every event.
Lying requires conveying conviction, even when there is no conviction. Lie often and vehemently enough, and the lie will eventually begin to take root in some recess of your consciousness and affect some of your actions.
Reality has shown the spin that Trump and all the denialists and minimizers tried to give the coronavirus was a lie. The best protected bunker in the land has been breached and the man at the center of it has been touched. The last vestiges of credibility of the deniers should now evaporate along with their presumptions of invulnerability.
