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25 April 20
RSN: Mort Rosenblum | Depraved-Heart Massacre
Mort Rosenblum, Reader Supported News
Rosenblum writes: "Donald Trump, shaping fingers into a pistol at a 2016 Iowa rally, exulted: 'I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn't lose any voters, okay?'"
Mort Rosenblum, Reader Supported News
Rosenblum writes: "Donald Trump, shaping fingers into a pistol at a 2016 Iowa rally, exulted: 'I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn't lose any voters, okay?'"
Today, it is as if he had blasted away in Manhattan with a machine gun.
For two months, he dismissed the clear and present Covid-19 threat, mocking it to crowds as yet another Democratic hoax. “It’s one person from China; we have it totally under control.” True believers put their lives at risk — and everyone else’s.
Now he rejects any blame in daily delusional ravings — fact-free self-focused hubris — as the virus kills in the tens of thousands. His past actions were perfect. His natural gift for science enabled him to see the pandemic coming before anyone.
“Depraved-heart murder,” Wikipedia says, is “a ‘depraved indifference’ to human life” that causes death” whether or not there is explicit intent to kill. It applies if “defendants commit an act even though they know their act runs an unusually high risk of causing death or serious bodily harm to a person.”
The case is clear-cut in America. And by scapegoating the World Health Organization, withholding funds it needs to thwart the pandemic and other killer diseases, Trump extends depraved indifference to an entire planet.
He imperiled the nation he swore to protect, ignoring his experts’ warnings as he fired up crowded rallies, thumbed inane tweets, and golfed. He tried to stop sick U.S. citizens on a ship off California from landing. That, he said, would drive up infection statistics.
After visiting the CDC, Trump told Fox News that experts, and also Vice President Mike Pence, wanted to bring the people to shore, but he disagreed. “I like the numbers being where they are,” he said. “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”
He hurled “fake news” insults at a briefing when asked about The New York Times’ April 14 investigation by six seasoned reporters with damning details, leaked documents, and video. Then he showed a shameless propaganda montage, edited so that Maggie Haberman’s words on camera came out as praise for him.
He claims he was the first leader to close borders to Chinese, neglecting to say Americans returning home brought in more virus. That was late January after 38 other countries imposed strict border controls. During February and into March, he continued to mock the threat.
Despite Trump’s repeated assertions, just over 1 percent of Americans have been tested, mostly the seriously sick and medical workers. There is almost no contact tracing. As a result, the actual number of cases is far higher than official figures report.
Known cases are fast closing in on one million, one third of the world total. Nearly 50,000 deaths, 25 times the number Osama Bin Laden killed on 9/11, are a fourth of the global toll. This in a country that makes up 4.25 percent of the world’s population.
America now tests 150,000 people a day. A study by Harvard specialists says that should be six times higher now and then increase by at least 10 times more during the summer before a likely resurgence in late fall when temperatures drop.
Against all but unanimous scientific advice, Trump is pushing hard to reopen for business. “People want to return to work,” he repeats, not adding that his reelection hinges on the economy. He urges his base to “liberate” swing states with Democratic governors.
Georgia, which lags far behind safety guidelines, is opening even massage salons, tattoo parlors, bowling alleys, and theaters. Governor Brian Kemp, a staunch Republican, forces mayors in Atlanta and Albany to comply despite vehement objections. People from other states can drive in to join crowds at restaurants and beaches.
Even Germany, a model of quick testing, containment, and low mortality, is restoring isolation after a cautious reopening. Pathogens are like spermatozoa. It only takes one to slip past protection.
When a novel coronavirus appears, unfazed by antibiotics or vaccines, urgent broad testing is crucial to find infected people so teams can track down their recent contacts. Even if borders are sealed to foreigners, returning citizens bring it home.
But Trump refused German-made tests that WHO provided to Asian and European countries to curb infections and prevent spikes that overwhelm hospitals. Tests also reassure fearful people when results are negative. This is about humans, not statistics.
Bungling and bureaucracy delayed U.S.-made tests for nearly two months. Trump declined to invoke the Defense Production Act, so profiteers sold vital necessities to the highest bidder. States compete with the federal government for overseas suppliers.
Meantime, Trump forges ahead on his devastating projects: The Wall, pipelines, plunder of national parks and wilderness. He is reversing limits on air and water pollution that will kill more people in the long run than Covid-19.
He claims absolute power, packing the courts at blinding speed and raising fears that he may attempt to delay November elections. Authoritarians elsewhere use the pandemic to blot out democracy. Terrorists seize the moment to recruit and attack.
After Congress voted to spend $2.2 trillion as emergency relief, Trump fired the inspector general charged with preventing corporate insiders and favored friends from creaming off funds meant for desperate families and struggling small businesses.
A recent exchange at the daily unhinged campaign-rally press briefing defines him.
Yamiche Alcindor of PBS said, “A man’s family got sick because they listened to you about the coronavirus,” and she asked, “Are you concerned you could have gotten people sick?”
He replied, “And a lot of people love Trump, right? A lot of people love me, right? To the best of my knowledge, I won.”
A few days ago, a reporter recalled that Mike Pence promised there would be 4 million new tests by the end of the week, which is more than the total so far. He asked what happened. Trump, oozing condescension, said, “I’ll say it for the fifth time. We have tested more than any country.”
An NBC poll found only 36 percent of Americans trust Trump to manage Covid-19, just over half of those who trust Anthony Fauci. Clearly miffed at being upstaged, Trump now eclipses him at briefings. He had to disgrace himself by recanting his assessment on CNN: Had the government acted more effectively, lives would have been saved.
Still, the NBC poll showed Trump’s approval ratings are unchanged from April 2019: 46 percent for, 51 percent against.
Rejecting bipartisan harmony, Trump heaps scorn on Democrats. He obliges states to beg for federal resources as if they were his own. He claimed absolute power, but then backpedaled. He can take credit for any successes and blame governors for all failures.
Trump pushed hard for hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial used for lupus and arthritis. It can’t hurt, he said. That spiked the price and limited supply to people who depended on it. Initial studies suggest it is useless against Covid-19 and may increase the risk of death.
After first praising Xi Jinping for transparency, Trump now blames the pandemic on China because it hid the truth. Of course, China is secretive and punishes people for speaking out. It’s China. The United States has a higher standard.
He says Barack Obama left no emergency stockpile, a bald lie. Even if that were true, he had three years to restock it. He says he inherited useless tests. As a very stable genius, he might have found a way to foresee a novel coronavirus that surfaced in late 2019.
He calls the outbreak a surprise to everyone. Who knew this might happen? In fact, he was blindsided because he dismantled Obama’s extensive global alert network, removed the health expert from the NSC, and hobbled U.S. intelligence.
Trump’s America-first approach shuns cooperation with well-run allies. Die Welt am Sonntag reported that he offered $1 billion for rights to a vaccine being developed if it would be exclusive to the United States.
He also ignores outbreaks in poor countries already facing collapsed food supply. When the Covid-19 pandemic is eventually blunted, it may well live on, endemic in regions from which refugees are forced to flee toward Europe and America.
This horrifies Michel Lavollay, a source I have trusted for 40 years, who knows as much as anyone about pandemics. He was a French volunteer doctor before linking up with Jonathan Mann, an American epidemiologist, to focus on HIV-AIDS.
When AIDS began to run wild in the 1980s, WHO focused on finding a medical magic bullet. But Mann, who did the first AIDS research in the Congo, knew the urgent priority was to stop people from exposure to it.
Lavollay supervised testing when Mann set up the U.N. Global Program on AIDS in 2000. Later, he saw diplomacy from the inside as the French Embassy health attaché in Washington. As a U.N. adviser, he was a confidant of Kofi Annan and Richard Holbrooke. Then he worked with Jonas Salk, who made the polio vaccine available to everyone. As Salk put it, “You don’t patent the sun.”
This, Lavollay told me, is the first global health threat in two decades not being countered by governments working together with volunteer agencies and private companies coordinated by the U.N. with America playing a lead role.
“No one trusts the United States anymore,” Lavollay said. “It’s impossible to deal with Trump. Governments and companies fight with each other, driving up costs. Without cooperation, a free-for-all and privatization will take an enormous toll.”
After talking with him, I watched Trump head off into an unhinged ramble about how much foreign aid America squanders on Africa. He stumbled over the acronym, PEPFAR, clearly new to him. “You don’t know about this,” he told reporters. “Nobody does.”
In fact, most of them do. George W. Bush launched the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in 2003, which funneled $80 billion into sub-Saharan Africa. By 2018, it had saved more than 17 million lives and kept countless family units from falling apart.
It was not what Trump calls needless charity to places he terms “shitholes.” For all of his faults, Bush knew that unless Africans and other impoverished people were helped to give their kids a shot at survival, “security” anywhere was out of the question.
Today, it is cruel as well as stupid not to cooperate globally against a virulent plague that crosses borders and oceans indiscriminately, exposing unfathomable numbers to lingering, lonely death. That sounds like a definition of depraved-heart murder.
Mort Rosenblum has reported from seven continents as Associated Press special correspondent, edited the International Herald Tribune in Paris, and written 14 books on subjects ranging from global geopolitics to chocolate. He now runs MortReport.org.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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