Trump believes anyone who dies from Covid-19 is a 'loser' Let the losers perish. [View all]

[Botany]

So I re-read it this week, in the wake of Trump’s self-immolation in Tulsa, because something in the noxious spew he’d spouted there reminded me of a brief segment of O’Toole’s piece, specifically Trump’s remark that he’d asked that Covid-19 testing be slowed down so as to give the appearance of fewer cases. Like most people I thought this statement was so beyond the pale that it had to be a joke, and in fact that was how his staff tried to spin it the day afterwards. But much in line with Masha Gessen’s admonition to “Believe the Autocrat—He means what he says,” it now appears that Trump was deadly serious on this point, as he has in fact confirmed multiple times since.


“I don’t kid,” he stated. And that’s absolutely true. Sociopaths like Trump don’t “kid” because they don’t possess or understand any “sense of humor.” Humor, particularly of the self-effacing variety requires a certain degree of humility—a willingness to relinquish control, however temporarily. Trump, who rarely smiles except in certain, learned circumstances and then only as if on cue, has never exhibited any signs that he comprehends humor, its purpose or uses.

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In How to Get Rich, Trump links his own germaphobia to the idea that some people are born losers. Winners are people who think positively—and positivity repels germs. “To me, germs are just another kind of negativity.” He then goes on to tell the story of an unnamed acquaintance who is driven home from the hospital in an ambulance after being treated for injuries sustained in a crash. The ambulance crashes and he has to be taken back to the hospital: “Maybe he’s just a really unlucky guy. Or maybe he’s a loser. I know that sounds harsh, but let’s face it—some people are losers.” The train of thought here is typically meandering, but the logic is clear enough. Losers are inevitably doomed by their own negativity, of which germs are a physical form. Infection happens to some people because they are natural losers.

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As O’Toole points out, this goes a long way towards his continual, pathological playing down of the threat, his infamous press conferences in which he surrounded himself with scientists but demanded center stage, all to demonstrate to his voting base that he, one of life's "winners," was firmly in control and that the worst pandemic to strike this country in over a century was nothing to take particularly seriously, unless you happened to be one of the losers who die from it.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/25/1955974/-Trump-believes-anyone-who-dies-from-Covid-19-is-a-loser?detail=emaildkre