This piece will be appearing this weekend as a newspaper op/ed in my very red congressional district (VA-06).
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Over the past week or two, as we’ve witnessed this President repeatedly sacrificing others to advance his own political interest, Trump has made the picture about as clear as could be: Trump cares nothing about other people, but only cares about himself.
On September 26th, Trump ordered an event on the White House lawn that quite predictably turned into a Superspreader for the coronavirus. In order to get the good “theater” he wanted to dramatize his triumphal moment of launching his nominee to fill an important Supreme Court seat, Trump summoned an audience of many of his prominent allies to sit cheek-by-jowl, and hobnob in tight formation, with virtually no one wearing masks.
Trump got his “good look,” but at the predictable cost of sickening some of Trump’s notable allies -- such as two Republican U.S. Senators who serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the President of Notre Dame University who came to give his blessing to Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
A few days later, it was his donors Trump showed himself willing to sacrifice. He already knew (that Thursday evening) that Hope Hicks was Covid positive, and knew therefore that – having been exposed -- he was obliged by the pandemic rules to quarantine himself. Yet Trump defied the rules and flew off to New Jersey to meet with big donors despite the danger – of which he did nothing to inform them – that he might be spreading the virus to them.
Trump refused to give up his lucrative fundraiser just to protect his donors, whom he endangered without their knowledge or consent.
Then, a few days later, there was Trump’s ordering himself driven around Walter Reed Hospital to show himself as the Conqueror of Covid. That drive – purely for his own political purposes – put two Secret Service officers at risk, compelled by duty to sit in an airtight car with a man with “severe Covid.”
Brave public servants whose job would require them to take a bullet to protect the President against external attack are compelled by this President to sell a false picture that boosts him politically. (A picture denying that the virus had made him a sick man spending most of his time lying in a hospital bed, denying what he was unable to hide later on the White House balcony, that the virus has him gasping some for breath.)
(All this confirms what we heard from VP Pence’s pandemic expert, Olivia Troye -- “For [Trump], [pandemic policy] was all about the election. He just can’t seem to care about anyone else besides himself” – and from Trump’s former National Security Advisor, John Bolton who said that for Trump, even when American interests were at stake, “Getting reelected was the only thing that mattered.”)
Even his own people—those who support him, work for him, protect him -- are but means to his ends.
Trump’s most recent words – to bolster his posture as the Conqueror of Covid -- will cost more lives: despite Covid having already killed twice as many Americans as the Korean War and the Vietnam war combined, Trump has told the American people that this disease is nothing to worry about.
From the outset, Trump apparently decided that his political advantage lay not in facing the reality and unifying the nation to meet the challenge – as FDR did in World War II -- but in denying and defying the pandemic.
(A decision, I’d wager, that no previous President would have made.)
No matter the costs paid by others. Costs like the more than 100,000 additional – needless -- American deaths, American lives lost that could have been preserved had Trump provided the kind of leadership that nations like Germany, South Korea, and New Zealand got from their national leaders.
So, Trump’s extraordinarily complete lack of caring for others, as demonstrated just in recent days by Trump’s visibly and repeatedly sacrificing people like
- the important Republicans showed up to support Trump’s predictably Superspreading event on the White House lawn;
- the big donors who came to write checks to a President who doesn’t tell them that, having been exposed, that he represents a possible threat to infect them;
- Secret Service personnel, dedicated civil servants whose job involves readiness to take a bullet to protect the President but whom Trump endangered just to maintain the politically helpful image of him as strong and invincible.
All our religions call upon us to care plenty about others, even to strive to love them as ourselves.
In political terms, a man who doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice others to get what he desires for himself is the last sort of person we should want wielding the powers of the American presidency.
Fortunately, the polls show an increasing number of Americans are coming to that conclusion.