While every day of the Trump presidency has been painful and with life-threatening implications (from climate change to reduced medical care to children freezing in cages), the Coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the pace and expanded the nature of that pain. It is hard to see anything in public discourse without being reminded of the pain that Trump and the rest of the GOP Anti-Science SyndromE Sufferers (hint: ASSES) are inflicting on America and the world. From disinformation about coronavirus risks, to false statements about preparedness and responses, to poorly thought through actions that create coronavirus petri dishes, Trump is literally putting more lives at risk with every passing second. And, in doing so, blatantly demonstrating his ignorance and disdain for experts, science, and, well, basic human common sense.
This afternoon, however, Trump did an impressive two-fer in just one sentence: with a celebratory combination of coronavirus science denial and climate science denial in one 14 word sentence.
Coronavirus science denialism
Amid growing restrictions on gatherings (with CDC guidance to not have gatherings above 50 people, shared out just yesterday in a Trump tweet) and clear evidence that social distancing is the most effective know weapon in the arsenal to reduce coronavirus deaths, Team Trump gathered a large crowd in the Rose Garden Friday to listen to a devotional crowd-given pat-on-the-back for a job poorly done.
Thank, I guess, for that declaration of a national emergency but a basic expectation of a “leader” is leadership. And, that includes modeling the sorts of behaviors and actions expected of all of U.S.
Climate science denialism
Trump tweets that
“the Rose garden” is “just coming out of a cold Winter!”
Seriously, WTF? Other than Trump being one of those elderly who flock to Miami for the winter and so divorced from the real world that weather is irrelevant, with essentially zero snow through the winter here, it is hard to see how anyone in the DC area (and, well, most of the world) could think that 2019-2020 has been a “cold winter”.
Some snippets from the #FakeNews Washington Post provide a window on this
- In explaining why the Cherry Blossoms are blooming far earlier than “normal”, the cause is that “The abnormally mild weather, which began in the winter, has accelerated this year’s bloom cycle.”
- Examining the winter, the headline explains: Global warming is making Washington’s climate more Southern. This winter, it most resembles Atlanta’s.
- Looking globally, “Across much of the Northern Hemisphere this year, winter was a shadow of its former self … Europe’s average temperature for December through February was 6.1 degrees Fahrenheit above the 40-year average, shattering the previous record by more than two degrees. In the United States, temperatures were above average for every state but Alaska.”
FFS Trump
Trump’s anti-science syndrome threaten lives and, well, is quite literally leading to lost lives.
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