The Delta Variant & the Trumper Blame Game: By Robert Reich
Aug. 8, 2021. The Delta Variant and the Trumper Blame Game.
As the highly contagious Delta variant surges, public health officials are trying to keep the focus on the urgent need for more vaccinations. But with increasing vehemence, Trump Republicans are falling back on their old game of deflecting attention by blaming immigrants crossing the southern border.
Last week, Trump issued a characteristic charge: “ICYMI: “Thousands of COVID-positive migrants passing through Texas border city,” linking a New York Post article claiming that “nearly 7,000 immigrants who tested positive for COVID-19 have passed through a Texas city that has become the epicenter of the illegal immigration surge.”
You may recall Trump employing this racist-nationalist theme before. For years he fixed his ire on Mexicans and Central Americans from “shitholes,” as he has so delicately put it. He began his 2016 campaign by charging that “criminals, drug dealers and rapists” were surging across America’s southern border, and then spent much of the subsequent four years trying to erect a fence to keep them out.
Trump acolytes are adopting the same demagoguery for the Delta surge. As hospitalizations in Florida soared past 12,000 this week, exceeding a record already shattered last weekend, Fla. Gov. Ron DeSantis accused President Biden of facilitating the virus by not reducing immigration through the southern border. “Why don’t you do your job?” DeSantis snapped after Biden suggested DeSantis stop opposing masks. “Why don’t you get this border secure? And until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about Covid from you, thank you.”...
More, https://robertreich.org/post/658970901484797952
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