The President Who Cried Wolf
Illustration by Carolyn Burt
President Donald John Trump lies about big things and small things. He lies about short things and tall things.
Our Commander-in-Chief lied about him and his campaign’s proven collusion with Russia during their coordinated attack on America during the 2016 election. He lied about him and his administration’s obstruction during Robert Mueller’s investigation into that Russian attack on our American democracy. He lied about not blackmailing Ukraine into helping him cheat in the upcoming 2020 election. He’s lied about his scam university, his scam children’s cancer charity, and his scam fundraiser for veterans. One could write encyclopedia volumes simply by recording his lies and disinformation, but perhaps an additional chapter of the DSM-V would be more appropriate.
Donald Trump has revolutionized lying, making an olympic sport out of it. In just his first three years in office, he’s racked up over 16,000 documented lies. We’re talking first-ballot Hall of Fame numbers. If our president's ability to lie made him a baseball player, he’d be putting up Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa steroid-era numbers combined.
While public health officials here in America and around the world have been sounding the alarm regarding the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) since last December, Trump has taken a different approach. When asked in January about the growing international alarm at the virus, Trump responded with magical beans, stating, “we [here in America] have it totally under control… we have it so well under control.” Over the next month he repeatedly called it a Democrat hoax, while at the same time blaming “the Democrat policy of open borders.” Trump now says that if 100,000 Americans die from COVID-19, he will consider it “a very good job” done by his administration. China, the original epicenter of the virus, had roughly 3,000 deaths from COVID-19 before it almost entirely contained and stopped the spread within it’s borders, while having a population three times the size of our own.
Once COVID-19 started stacking up bodies here in America, Trump’s lying adapted with the times. He lied and blamed the Obama administration. He lied about Google setting up a national coronavirus testing website. He lied about not eliminating the National Security Council’s global health security unit over a year ago, firing or reassigning its pandemic experts. As the president who cried wolf tells it, “I didn’t do it… I don’t know anything about it.”
He lied about there being scientifically proven treatments for the virus, of which Americans have subsequently died from. He lied for weeks about enacting the Defense Production Act to speed up production of necessary medical supplies. He lied about coronavirus testing being available to any American who wanted it, falsely saying, “the tests are all perfect, like the letter [to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky] was perfect.” Trump was asked in mid-March if he accepted any responsibility as Commander-in-Chief for the “failing” over coronavirus testing, as the government’s own top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, recently put it. Trump had a rare moment of naked honesty as he immediately responded, “No, I don’t take responsibility at all.” On that point alone, America as a whole believes him.
As David Remnick wrote earlier this month in The New Yorker, “As the world now faces a pandemic, it has never been more essential…to admit what has been demonstrated on a daily basis about the public official who carries ultimate responsibility for the public safety of American citizens: Donald Trump is incapable of truth, heedless of science, and hostage to the demands of his insatiable ego.”
President Trump has likened the fight against COVID-19 to a war, and enthusiastically framed himself as a wartime president. Unfortunately for Trump and America, there are no draft deferments in this war. Good leadership involves telling people uncomfortable truths, even when it comes at your own personal expense. It also requires taking responsibility, even when things aren’t directly your fault.
America hit a grim milestone last week, with triple-digit deaths from COVID-19 within a single 24-hour period. Those numbers have since skyrocketed. This happened as the World Health Organization (WHO) put out a statement declaring that the virus is accelerating across the globe, including here in America. Shortly after, Trump contradicted the WHO and top healthcare professionals across the country, including in his own administration, saying he might lift his meager 15-day order for Americans to voluntarily social distance. His reasoning: “[this] country wasn’t built to be shut down.”
Trump followed up by arbitrarily saying that Easter was his magical date for ending the national voluntary lockdown, once again directly contradicting the doctors and scientists. When asked who on his staff recommended easing those guidelines, Trump responded, “I just thought it was a beautiful time. A beautiful time, a beautiful timeline.” Within days America became the worldwide epicenter of the international COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, Univ. of Minnesota Center For Infectious Diseases Director, had a different take than the president’s: “We’re in the very first weeks of a coronavirus winter…I don’t see us getting out of this for many, many months. To say anything other than that is just to deny reality.” Or as Dr. Fauci put it, “You don’t make the timeline. The virus makes the timeline.” Apparently viruses don’t care much for international or domestic borders, let alone people’s opinions.
America is currently a rudderless ship with no captain entering deadly class-VI rapids. Millions of Americans will have their loved ones die because of the virus and the resulting deluge on our healthcare system. While our Commander-in-Chief chooses dollars over lives, fiction over facts, lies over leadership, the job for the rest of us is to step up to the plate and fill that void. Hold each other accountable, starting with family and friends. Put science over feelings, even if it bruises someone’s delicate ego. This isn’t the time to flap your lips, it’s time to ante up whatever you’ve got. Worthless thoughts and prayers ain't going to get the job done on this one. As the old saying goes: When the going gets tough, the tough get going. And the liars lie.
