In case you don’t have any experience with role playing games, you may have not noticed this:
Trump is treating the pandemic like a game of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve played Dungeons & Dragons, but I remember idiot players like Trump well.
Dungeon Master: A translucent, jelly-like blob slowly slithers toward you, consuming everything in its path.
Idiot player: I know! We’ll use heat! Or light! How about light?
Dungeon Master: Light has no effect on the monster.
Idiot player: But what about a powerful light? I’m talking a very powerful light? No, a tremendous light! What about a tremendous light?
Dungeon Master: What?
Idiot player: Wait! Lysol! What if I drink a little Lysol? Or inject Lysol into my body.
Dungeon Master: No. You don’t have any Lysol, and that would not work. Did someone hit you in the head with a brick before you got here?
Idiot player: Not Lysol, but some other disinfectant. Some magical disinfectant, maybe? What if I inject some powerful, tremendous, magical disinfectant into my bloodstream?
Dungeon Master: What is wrong with you?
Idiot player: What? You thought I was serious just because I sounded super serious and asked those questions with an unwarranted amount of confidence, earnestness, and sincerity? Because I wasn’t. I was just being sarcastic. I was joking. Just to see what you would say. Can’t you take a joke?
Dungeon Master: The blob eats you. Now leave. And don’t forget your personally-monikered dice and that jacket that doesn’t fit with you. We all hate you. Never come back.
Trump is literally spitballing with Americans lives. Throwing nonsense on the wall and hoping that something sticks.
Remember his obsession with hydroxychoroquine? He hasn’t mentioned that miracle drug in days after urging Americans to try it dozens of times in press conferences for weeks.
Fox News mentioned this miracle drug more than 500 times while Trump was touting its effectiveness. Now both Trump and Fox News have gone silent on hydroxychoroquine.
Why?
A peer-reviewed study in the Journal of the American Medical Association released a new study Friday reports that researchers cut short a study testing chloroquine as a potential treatment for COVID-19 over safety concerns, citing a “primary outcome” of death. Nearly two dozen patients died and some developed irregular heart rates after taking doses of the drug daily.
The primary outcome of taking Trump’s suggested medication was death.
When asked why he was promoting this drug just a week ago, he said:
“I want them to try it. And it may work, and it may not work. But if it doesn’t work, it’s nothing lost by doing it. Nothing.”
Except your life.
Trump is a goddamn monster.
Instead of establishing a national network for testing and contact-tracing, utilizing the Defense Production Act to ensure that healthcare workers have enough PPE, and expressing a modicum of empathy for the 50,000 American lives already lost to this disease, he steps to the podium every day and tosses out a new, stupid idea.
First it was a medication that killed people. Now it’s shining a powerful light on the body and injecting disinfectant into the bloodstream.
In between this nonsense, he attacks the media for asking the kinds of questions that Americans want answered. He complains that governors are not sufficiently appreciative for the materials sent from the national stockpile. He instructs his Vice President on national television to ignore phone calls from governors who are not nice enough. He blatantly lies to the public while complimenting his own handling of the pandemic at every turn.
Yesterday, when asked about the wisdom of holding political rallies back in March, he denied holding rallies in March, even though there is video footage of him holding rallies in March and tens of thousands of witnesses to those rallies.
Trump is a goddamn monster who is treating the pandemic like some kind of a game that he’s trying to wish and lie away. Instead of engaging in a realistic plan to manage this crisis – administrated by experts in medicine, public policy, and public safety – he steps to the podium and brags about his television ratings while doing nothing by way of any coordinated, federal response to this disease.
Trump is a monster. He acts like he is playing some kind of game, and Americans are dying because of it.
