Why did the president knowingly mislead America about the coronavirus threat?

[bucolic_frolic]

Link to tweet

Kyle Griffin
@kylegriffin1
Why did the president knowingly mislead America about the coronavirus threat?

________________

I've been reading this Tweet for many days. I never see anyone reply with an answer.

I guess I'll venture a guess.

To maximize returns on their stock portfolios after the private Senate briefing on coronavirus in late January, the 24th?

In other words, the bigger the COVID wave and the more patients and the more cases and hospitalizations, the greater the returns to their stock portfolios?

Cynical, but does it sort of fit?

[elleng]

1. He had no idea what to do,

and got tangled in the issues you raise.

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Yes, that must be it.

These are sideshow issues to the re-election campaign and not wanting a market crash or a panic. The fallout would not be serious, he thought, because, as usual, experts were always wrong!

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. he has no idea what he is doing. He doesn't actually want to do anything.

He never has - not bright, no curiosity, lazy - it is just about (bad) deals, (someone else's) money, and sucking up attention to feed his damaged ego.

Republicans in general hate to govern - and trump is the culmination. He has no interest in the job, no talent, and really can't do anything with any sort of complexity.

[foo_fighter999]

25. Yep.

I think he figured he could ignore it and it would go away. He's never had do to anything about, well, much of anything in his life and has never had to suffer the consequences. He's always been surrounded by 'fixers' that covered his ass.

And when things started going south, he did what he has always done. Lie about everything and try to blame everyone else for his own abject failure.

I can't wait for the election to be over so we can kick his sorry ass out of the White House. It will be so nice to have an adult back in charge.

[captain queeg]

3. I don't think he has a master plan. I think he just says whatever he thinks is expedient

That he thinks makes him look good and avoids any responsibility. And once he starts down a path he is incapable of changing course.

[Dorian Gray]

7. This

Add stupidity to the mix, and you've got the Trump Cocktail.

[Wicked Blue]

5. Putin ordered him to do it

Putin wants a weaker, less powerful U.S.

[Rice4VP]

6. He's an evil scumbag and he thought that

only Black and Brown people would get it and his supporters would be fine and wouldn’t care and still vote for him

[bdamomma]

8. That

Senate meeting is when those certain senators sold their stock. They knew before us.

[3catwoman3]

9. I have been asking myself this all week.

His drooling followers worship him so uncritically that had he but said, “Everyone should wear a mask,” they would have obeyed him without question. What a difference that could have made.

To turn his own question back on him, what was in it for him to so obstinately deny the risk.

I do not understand.

[blogslut]

10. The toxic positivity of Norman Vincent Peale

Both Fred senior and Donald were/are adherents. Acknowledging a public health crisis is vulnerability. Vulnerability is weakness. Weakness is failure.

[bucolic_frolic]

13. I'm glad you mentioned that, in that way

because my dad was influenced by it at some point in life, and he made the worst decisions imaginable because he could not see problems or potential pitfalls well enough to evaluate them. Everything was going to turn out fine!

[vapor2]

11. Spot on

PLUS he said he didn't want people to panic = he didn't want the stock market to panic

[apcalc]

12. Even he knew he was incompetant.

Thus, pretend it was nothing, because to address it would require work and planning...two things of which he is incapable.

[underpants]

14. He trusted Jared, got behind, couldn't admit he might be wrong, tried to throw on the Governors.

Jared advised Trump that this whole thing was no biggee. Treat it like bad PR. Trump did which set in motion “lost February” and Trump setting policy because he can’t process (let alone admit) that he made a mistake. He realized he’d lost the game so he tried to put it on the Governors.

Meanwhile Jared was screwing up testing then trying to dump it on blue states. They didn’t vote for Trump and it would make their Governors look bad. Then Jared screwed up on PPE because he didn’t trust government experts and thought “the market” could handle it. Vanity Fair has two fantastic articles on Jared’s complete miserable failures.

[dewsgirl]

15. He is being directed by Putin.

[Beringia]

16. He's still doing it, it works in his favor somehow

[Stinky The Clown]

17. He's pure transaction oriented. In his tiny mind a bad pandemic would make HIM look bad

so he tried to ignore it at first. Then it got away from him.

[triron]

18. Because he is a traitor. Simple to me.

[MerryBlooms]

19. he was forcing states to bid against each other for PPE

then confiscating the states' PPE for his stockpile, making millions. he and his minions in the senate, house and administration, made millions off their stock sales and investments. It was always about enriching trump family interests and their buddies.

eta: No one in media or elected officials have brought up the PPE pirating, including Biden's team, which I think they should from here on out!

[moonscape]

20. It's remarkable. Had he rallied the country and tackled the

pandemic, he'd sadly likely have been elected again. But, he doesn't have the capacity to lead on one.single.thing. He wouldn't even have had to do much, just hand it off to competent people and scientists, give some press briefings, and gotten all the credit for giving it to capable folks.

[Orangepeel]

21. he hoped if he ignored it, it would go away

he never faced any consequences before and hoped something would bail him out

[brewens]

22. It had to be the best case scenario for Trump's election chances. His only thought was

it's unfair. This can't happen to me.

It was kind of like a Hail Mary. Just go for it and hope it doesn't get bad, goes away soon, and he thought he'd win. A lot of it may have come from Trump's collaborators that realize their lives as they are may be over if he loses. If that meant risking killing thousands of people, that was just the way it had to be.

[AmericanCanuck]

23. It is simple logic

1. He was told the economy was his ticket to getting reelected.
2. He thinks stock market is the economy.
3. He wanted to keep the stock market high to ensure reelection.
4. He tried not to panic the markets and downplayed the Covid threat, calling it a hoax even.

Stupid people always do stupid things.

[bamagal62]

24. THIS

[Straw Man]

26. A combination of laziness, cluelessness, and venality.

As has been noted, he never did much of anything anyway. Blow off steam at some rallies, play golf, bloviate on Twitter; he wouldn't know a work ethic if it bit him on the ass. Then there's the fact that he has no idea how to manage anything, much less a crisis; greed, luck, and a Daddy with deep pockets are the only reason he got as far as he did. Finally, foreknowledge of the coming COVID crash allowed some of his cronies -- and probably himself -- to dump their stocks before they tanked and then buy at the low ebb, knowing that the market's eventual recovery would leave them sitting pretty. That explains the desperation to get things going again, despite the pandemic being nowhere near over.