We knew that Donald Trump doesn’t care about small children – either the small brown ones he cages or all others he threatens with his anti-environmental policies.
We knew that Donald Trump doesn’t care about the military – stealing money earmarked for the armed services (a theft recognized as such by the courts) to build a wall – that Mexico has not contributed un centavo toward.
We knew that Donald Trump doesn’t care about American values – praising dictators and autocrats and endorsing klanazi bigotry on our own soil.
We knew that Donald Trump didn’t care about women – except as possible targets of gleeful predation.
We knew that Donald Trump didn’t care about poor people even before he re-launched his attack on the Affordable Care Act to limit their health care in the middle of a pandemic. More than 500,000 people who lost their company insurance along with their jobs have applied for this coverage over the past three months. Donald Trump and Greed’s Own Party does not care.
But, we weren’t aware until recently that Donald Trump doesn’t even care about his own supporters.
With Typhoid Mary as his role model, the president has taken to the campaign trail during the COVID-19 pandemic, encouraging his followers to congregate in enclosed spaces without protective masks. Stroking his ego takes precedence over their safety.
Not wearing a mask to protect yourself and others from a serial killer averaging about 1,000 deaths per day has now become a pro-Trump political statement in order to support the most-tested and protected pandemic denier in the country.
June 20, the president brought his infected staff to Tulsa as Oklahoma’s coronavirus infections were already spiking on a daily basis. Eight campaign staffers tested positive almost immediately and, subsequently, dozens of Secret Service agents and others are now in self-isolation.
That Trump ended the day departing his helicopter with his weary, stunned, orange clown face streaked white offers the hope that the majority no-shows expected for his rally did actually put their health above his ego.
(Could it be that our Infector-in-Chief’s aversion to a mask is because he knows that it will similarly streak his face paint?)
On June 23, Trump took his Coronavirus Covers the Country Tour to Phoenix – as Arizona, too, was witnessing an upsurge in reported cases. Here, his supporters were in a “tightly packed megachurch,” according to National Public Radio.
He did manage to verify something we’ve known all along. He doesn’t care about facts either.
The Huffington Post’s reported: ”President Donald Trump on Tuesday indicated that he didn’t know what the ‘19’ in COVID-19 stands for.
“In the middle of a riff in which he also made racist jokes about the coronavirus, Trump said he wondered about the infection’s official name.
“’COVID-19, COVID, I said what’s the 19?’ he asked at an event in Arizona. ‘COVID-19, some people can’t explain the 19.’”
In January, someone might wonder about the nomenclature – and find the answer. Maybe even March if you were slow on the uptake. How about as the death toll started rising up toward 120,000 Americans?
The fact is his counselor, Kellyanne Conway, made that same gaffe in mid-April. And was roasted hilariously by pundits across the nation. So, even if one didn’t know two months ago that the “19” stood for 2019, the year the virus was first detected, anybody paying attention was immediately informed.
And who’s not paying attention? First you have to care about dying Americans and then care enough to educate yourself instead of denying the evidence. Trump doesn’t care about facts, or educating himself to any issue or even the welfare of his supporters. Egomania is like that, and Trump’s version of that disease threatens the welfare of us all.
(Gary Edmondson is chair of the Stephens County Democratic Party: scdpok.us or facebook.com/SCDPOK/.)