蘑菇视频

Sep 13, 2020 2 min read

I am beyond disgusted this morning after hearing the news yesterday that our president knew early on how dangerous and contagious the coronavirus would be. For anyone who might want to apply the “fake news” label to this story, listen to the audio recording of Trump’s remarks to writer Bob Woodward. In his own voice, he admits to wanting to play it down.

Now we get the backtracking from Trump and the White House that this was done intentionally to avoid panicking the public. I assure you that Americans — unlike the president — can handle negative news. This country processed disturbing news about Pearl Harbor and the Cuban Missile Crisis and the 9/11 attacks by uniting and not panicking.

Withholding information about the severity of the pandemic was bad enough, but Trump was spreading the opposite disinformation that it would all soon be going away, that it was the Democrats’ new hoax, and that it was nothing more than the “strenuous flu” (whatever that is). Meanwhile mask-wearing was derided, and even discouraged. This resulted in many thousands of unnecessary COVID-19 deaths.

To put it in business terms that Trump might understand: Say you were the CEO of a pharmaceutical company who found out that a key ingredient of your top-selling drug caused cancer. If you held back that news to avoid panicking shareholders and customers, your board of directors would say “You’re fired!” for gross malfeasance and dereliction of duty.

Some of the blame also lies with author Bob Woodward, who held on to these incriminating tapes of Trump’s admissions while witnessing his regular downplaying of the facts, and with National Security Advisor Robert C. O’Brien, who had briefed Mr. Trump on the seriousness of the situation (and should have resigned in protest), and perhaps even Dr. Anthony Fauci if he knew all this background as well, without speaking up more vehemently.

If this is anyone’s idea of how to Keep America Great, you may want to rethink that.

Bernard Quarrick

Uniontown