Greg Sargent: Trump's latest coronavirus lies have a galling subtext

[Dennis Donovan]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/05/trumps-latest-coronavirus-lies-have-galling-subtext/

By Greg Sargent
Opinion writer

March 5, 2020 at 10:36 a.m. EST

President Trump is now claiming he has a “hunch” that the World Health Organization is wrong about the death rate from coronavirus -- it’s far lower, Trump claims -- while also suggesting that going to work with the virus isn’t dangerous.

Meanwhile, Trump is attacking Democratic criticism of his administration’s response to the virus as nothing more than an effort to hurt him politically -- a move that’s designed to place his government’s handling of a public health emergency beyond scrutiny entirely.

Each of those things is profoundly galling on its own. But if you put them together, they add up to something substantially worse than the sum of their parts.

To wit: It is now falling to Democratic elected officials to correct Trump’s lies to the American people about something that poses a dire threat to them. At times Democrats are literally going around Trump to get the real truth out to the public.

Yet even as this is happening, Trump is working to delegitimize what those Democrats are saying. It’s a double whammy of gaslighting: Trump is misleading the American people while making it harder for other elected officials to responsibly inform them where Trump will not.

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Utterly maddening!!! :

[malaise]

1. ITTMF

again

[dewsgirl]

2. If anything the death rate is higher, yikes dangerous idiot.😳

[genxlib]

3. Here is the ultimate irony

Even IF the effective death rate were lower, people taking it to work could expose a great deal more potential victims.

The net result could be more deaths.

[Cracklin Charlie]

4. He has to have heard experts encouraging people to stay home when sick.

There is only one reason for him to suggest otherwise.

Sick bastard wants people to die. Only explanation for his behavior.