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Trump will accept a 'steady' few hundred coronavirus deaths a day as the cost of his reelection
Washington Post/Politics/Analysis
Philip Bump
July 6, 2020 at 9:28 a.m. MST
His ability to convince America that it should do the same depends on a deeply flawed argument
President Trump presents his approach to the coronavirus pandemic as being rooted in optimism. He’s said so explicitly, arguing that it’s his role to offer hope to the public. This motivation is reflected in nearly everything he says about the virus: that there will soon be a vaccine, that it will go away, that there are or will be drugs which can ameliorate its worst effects.
This isn't really optimism, though. It's safer to describe it as a disinterest in addressing negative consequences over the long term. Trump fights no battle that lasts much beyond the following day's sunrise. One effect is to hype short-term victories which will obviously soon be shown to be hollow, like Trump's repeated predictions about how low the death toll from the pandemic would be.
So we get the administration's new approach to the pandemic, one which resembles the final moments of a climactic battle scene in an action movie. The protagonist, after fending off enemy after enemy, sees the finish line in sight. So he puts his shoulder down and makes a mad rush for perceived safety. In this case, the finish line is Election Day. In this case, the enemy is Americans who've died of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
An unnamed government official summarized the administration's approach succinctly in an interview with NBC News: “The virus is with us, but we need to live with it."
This isn't really optimism, though. It's safer to describe it as a disinterest in addressing negative consequences over the long term. Trump fights no battle that lasts much beyond the following day's sunrise. One effect is to hype short-term victories which will obviously soon be shown to be hollow, like Trump's repeated predictions about how low the death toll from the pandemic would be.
So we get the administration's new approach to the pandemic, one which resembles the final moments of a climactic battle scene in an action movie. The protagonist, after fending off enemy after enemy, sees the finish line in sight. So he puts his shoulder down and makes a mad rush for perceived safety. In this case, the finish line is Election Day. In this case, the enemy is Americans who've died of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
An unnamed government official summarized the administration's approach succinctly in an interview with NBC News: “The virus is with us, but we need to live with it."
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/06/trump-will-accept-steady-few-hundred-coronavirus-deaths-day-cost-his-reelection/
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