Trump now says he knew the virus 'could be horrible'

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

when he was saying things like ‘it’s going to disappear’

On Tuesday, a somber President Trump acknowledged that under the best-case scenario, 100,000 to 200,000 Americans could die of coronavirus. “It’s not the flu,” he said, in stark contrast to when he compared it with the flu repeatedly in March.

So now that the president seems to have come around to the gravity of the health crisis, what does he think about his weeks of downplaying a virus he now says is serious? And what about not advising social distancing weeks earlier, even though there is widespread agreement among public health experts that Americans should have been isolating sooner than mid-March?

CNN’s Jim Acosta asked Trump those questions repeatedly Tuesday. And on this front, Trump had not changed: He was unwilling to admit error.

Let’s start with Trump downplaying the virus. Acosta asked him: “Is there any fairness to the criticism that you may have lulled Americans into a false sense of security? When you were saying things like it’s going to go away and that sort of thing?"

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-now-says-he-knew-the-virus-could-be-horrible-when-he-was-saying-things-like-its-going-to-disappear/ar-BB121FyX?li=BBnb7Kz

[CurtEastPoint]

1. That in itself is grounds to remove and ... can't say it.

[thegoose]

2. Fuck him

This new somber act is just that...an act. You think he suddenly acquired empathy for others? Yeah, right.

[Blue Owl]

3. So that's how a sane person reacts?

Someone who deems themself a 'stable genius'?

Go fuck yourself tRump.

[rockfordfile]

4. Lock him up

[Eliot Rosewater]

5. Eliminating pollution standards, the EPA etc...The prick under orders from Putin

is trying to kill millions of us.

[Solly Mack]

6. Mister can't ever be wrong ain't never been right.

Fuck him.

[magicarpet]

7. So he wants us to believe he gave us a bullshit fabricated story about Coronavirus..

... because out of his abundance of compassion - he was afraid he might scare us if he laid the truth on the table.

What an incompetent, ignorant, inept, idiot this lying bastard is.

[Baitball Blogger]

8. I want to know who died in his circle that finally woke him up?

He had to wait until the "ride it out" contingency finally found their senses.

[UpInArms]

11. From this DU thread

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016251032#post5

Trump’s latest tonal and tactical shift (and almost certainly not the last) was driven by several factors, both personal and political. Trump learned that his close friend, 78-year-old New York real estate mogul Stan Chera, had contracted COVID-19 and fallen into a coma at NewYork-Presbyterian. “Boy, did that hit home. Stan is like one of his best friends,” said prominent New York Trump donor Bill White. Trump also grew concerned as the virus spread to Trump country. “The polling sucked. The campaign panicked about the numbers in red states. They don’t expect to win states that are getting blown to pieces with coronavirus,” a former West Wing official told me. From the beginning of the crisis, Trump had struggled to see it as anything other than a political problem, subject to his usual arsenal of tweets and attacks and bombast. But he ultimately realized that as bad as the stock market was, getting coronavirus wrong would end his presidency. “The campaign doesn’t matter anymore,” he recently told a friend, “what I do now will determine if I get reelected.”

[Baitball Blogger]

19. That paragraph wraps itself around the entire problem!

Thank you!

[UpInArms]

13. And ... this is interesting

As Trump Reassured Public, He Reportedly Told Friend to Leave NYC Over Coronavirus

According to sources cited by the New York Post, Trump warned real estate magnate Stanley Chera that leaving for his summer home in New Jersey would be “safer.”

In public, President Trump has repeatedly reassured Americans that the coronavirus is “totally under control.” In private, however, Trump warned a close friend of his to leave New York City as the pandemic was worsening. The city has become the biggest coronavirus hotspot in the United States.

According to sources cited by the New York Post, Trump warned Stanley Chera, a 78-year-old New York City real estate magnate, that leaving for his summer home near Deal, New Jersey, would be “safer.” The warning seems to have worked, as Chera fled the city for New Jersey.

and ...

March 24, 2020

Developer and Trump pal Stanley Chera hospitalized

Real estate honcho Stanley Chera has been hospitalized in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

The 78-year-old developer, who introduced his good pal President Trump at last fall’s Veterans Day Parade, was rushed to New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in recent days from his summer home near Deal, New Jersey, with an unknown illness, sources said.

As the coronavirus pandemic grew, Trump had advised his longtime friend to decamp to Deal, where many Syrian Jewish families have large homes on the Atlantic Ocean, saying it would be “safer” than New York City, real estate sources said.

A White House spokesperson in a cryptic email only said that the president “connected with Stanley” and that “all is resolved.”

[Baitball Blogger]

20. So Chera was already infected?

[la-trucker]

9. Asshole is becoming a soothsayer

with a 20:20 hindsight

[randr]

10. If the words passed his lips

They are lies

[unblock]

12. Once again showing he has the mental and emotional maturity of a 5-year old. "I knew that!"

[Marrah_Goodman]

14. I can't say what I would like to do if I ever ran into him.

Hi Agent Mike!

[JHB]

15. Translation: "All the people around me NOW say it's going to be horrible..."

"...and with me, the opinion the counts is 'whoever talked to me last'."

[Permanut]

16. Fake news..

I have it on good authority that the corona virus is a hoax.

[ooky]

17. ...so he better get a few rounds of golf in while he still could. nt

[Caliman73]

18. Trump is limited.

His affect and general response to things appear to be limited to two basic responses, Anger and Self-aggrandizement. He does not express emotions that appear to be on the "typical range" of human responses. No empathy, no sympathy, no curiosity, no joy.

His response to Acosta's questions illustrate how limited he is. He said that he was trying to be the nation's cheerleader. When you compare him to people who faced difficult situations from FDR to Churchill, to Kennedy, and President Obama in the midst of tragedies like Sandy Hook. Those leaders were able to communicate the gravity, the danger, and the sorrow of the events facing their nation, but also have a resolve to persevere that inspired hope.

Trump in his limited range of human emotion thinks that you have to downplay the severity of a situation or you are being "negative". Same thing with questions. When people ask him to address situations that are unclear or ask him to explain decisions, that is being negative. There is no complexity to his emotional and cognitive processes. You can tell people that the situation is very serious, with the possibility of becoming worse, but you can also instill hope by being firm, directive, and by assuring people that we may suffer, but we will come out the other end of the crisis and we will persevere.

Instead, for Trump it is stupid one liners like, "It is going to be great!" "We will come out stronger than ever". Worthless platitudes that are undercut by a worsening crisis.