Further Thoughts on the Con Man in the White House

Further Thoughts on the Con Man in the White House

       Honest people are generally consistent.  If you are dishonest, there are a couple of ways to operate.  Either you remember all of your lies and work to sound as consistent as possible, or you take several positions on everything: when confronted, you quote whichever position clears you.  As an example, you can advocate relaxing mitigation policies to slow the spread of covid-19, tweeting to your followers to liberate particular states, then hours later claim that you are against Georgia's relaxation policy.  An added bonus is that if things go well in Georgia, you can take credit for encouraging the "liberation";  if things go badly, you can blame the governor.  Con men never stop conning.

     Similarly, you can repeat that you closed the borders to China as a defense against failing to do anything else.  (Note: even with the Chinese ban, thousands of Chinese still came to the U.S.; meanwhile, the virus was already here via Europe.)

      Interestingly, Trump has been consistent on some issues, and he's probably being honest about those.

His policies on banning immigration and asylum, although draconian, have been consistent.  Likewise, he claims to support the environment, Social Security, and health care, while quietly and consistently trying to dismantle them.  In these areas, his rhetoric and actions, while each is consistent, are entirely opposed.

     I suspect that from the beginning, Trump has recognized that covid-19 testing and tracing would produce data that exposes his complete lack of preparedness and the incompetence of his administration.  So, he continues to claim relentlessly that the U.S. leads the world in testing, while simultaneously doing everything he can to hinder testing (his press secretary says that testing the entire population is "nonsensical").  Meanwhile, he claims that the $25 billion designated for testing was a "concession" to Democrats.  He'll argue that it's the Democrats' fault if testing is inadequate, but take credit for signing the bill any time testing is helpful.  

     But we all know that talk is cheap, don't we (don't we)?  If only people would pay attention to things like what Trump has proposed in his budgets, rather than listening to what he says, the con could end.  There can be many interpretions of data, but sometimes the data is overwhelmingly illuminating.  For example, consider that the U.S. and South Korea both had their first deaths from covid-19 on the same day.  As of April 23rd, the death count in South Korea was 238.  Trump's death count: over 46,000, and as of this writing on May 8th, Trump's count is around 79,000 and expected to reach 165,000 at a minimum by the end of August. 

     Con men don't like facts, except, of course, "alternate facts".  I'm reminded of Lincoln, to whom Trump loves to compare himself.  You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool a virus.

- PeteBarkett.blogspot.com

  05/08/20