Virus deadly enough without Trump's botched response

By Sid Schwab / Herald columnist

Dr. Robert Redfield, Trump’s head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a virologist, which is good. One investigated for questionable research, which isn’t.

He called AIDS God’s judgment on gays; opposed, on religious grounds, providing needle exchanges and condoms to at-risk people. Has no management experience. Also not good. He’s the guy smiling lovingly as Trump brags about his aptitude for science, lauding him on cue, laughing appreciatively when Trump called our governor “a snake.” Might Redfield’s Trump-fluffing have something to do with CDC’s tardy, disjointed response to Covid-19?

Soon after Donald “Chinese-hoax-windmill-cancer-virus-will-disappear-like-magic” Trump revealed he hadn’t known people died from influenza, he claimed “a natural instinct for science.” Some 675,000 Americans died in the flu pandemic of 1918, and our “president” didn’t know. Previously, he’d asked why the flu vaccine wouldn’t work on Covid-19, and expected a vaccine in two months. For him, that’s natural, all right, but instinct it’s not. It illuminates, however, how he bankrupted six businesses before becoming “president.”

In 2016, Republicans overlooked Trump’s prior failures. Now, like those businesses, we’re imperiled by a person convinced he knows more about everything than anyone. Who ignores expert advice. Who’s more devoted to protecting his image than fellow Americans, fabricating lies to maintain it. Who, visiting the CDC, presumably to appear in charge, instead let loose an astounding string of falsehoods, self-congratulation and gibberish. His unfit leadership was writ large as the gilded name on his hotels. Then he absconded to Mar-a-Lago, compounding the $131 million in taxpayer dollars for his golfing; not including hundreds of thousands in inflated prices his properties charge the Secret Service.

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