During an interview with Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro this weekend, Donald Trump’s son Eric suggested the COVID-19 shutdowns are a “cognizant strategy” meant to hurt his father’s re-election chances.
“You watch, they’ll milk it every single day between now and November 3,” he said. “And guess what, after November 3, coronavirus will magically, all of a sudden, go away and disappear and everybody will be able to reopen.”
“They think they are taking away Donald Trump’s greatest tool, which is being able to go into an arena and fill it with 50,000 people every single time,” he continued. “Joe Biden can’t get 10 people in a room. My father is getting 50,000 in a room. And they want to do everything they can to stop it.”
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Let’s stop and examine this, because this alternative reality “narrative” is likely to be with us for the next several months, if not forever.
It is entirely possible that social distancing favors Biden, but the notion that it’s a “cognizant strategy” that will “magically” end after the election is tantamount to saying that coronavirus (which has now killed around 90,000 Americans) is a complete fabrication, or, at least, dramatically overblown.
An aside: I was told coronavirus would “miraculously” be gone by April. I guess Papa Trump was off by a few months?
Of course, it is theoretically possible that coronavirus is a serious danger and that our government’s mitigation strategy made the cure worse than the disease. But if one subscribes to this theory, it’s worth asking: Who’s to blame? This brings you to an uncomfortable question: WHO’S IN CHARGE?
The answer, of course, is Donald J. Trump.
Like many Trumpian narratives, Eric’s conspiracy faces problems with logic: His father, ostensibly the victim of social distancing, is the same president who imposed social distancing guidelines in the first place.
“The better you do, the faster this whole nightmare will end,” Trump said on April 30. “It’s very important that everyone strongly follow the guidelines,” he continued. (In fairness, he also essentially told people not to follow his own guidelines at other times.)
Trump may want to run as a victimized outsider, but any sitting president is, by definition, a consummate establishment insider.
If social distancing is a hoax, then why did Donald Trump destroy “the greatest economy that we’ve ever had in our history”… for nothing?
If social distancing is a liberal scheme to take down his presidency, then why was Trump complicit?
And if it’s perfectly safe to hold a huge political rally, then why doesn’t Trump man up and hold one tonight?
You can’t have it both ways. Trump either is in charge of what Eric Trump characterized as a hoax, or he’s a patsy who has been duped by his enemies. Either scenario should be disqualifying.
Speaking of disqualifying, in related news, Donald Trump Jr. launched a sleazy attack on Instagram, suggesting Joe Biden is a pedophile. Not to be outdone, Eric followed that up by posting (and later deleting) a tweet asking the question: “Would you trust Joe Biden to drive your child to school?”
This seems to fit into the Trump playbook of accusing other people of things that he might just as easily be accused of. I’m not saying of course that I have any evidence that Trump has done anything like that. But over the years, Trump has said some sketchy things about underage girls, including reportedly telling a 10-year-old girl and a 14-year-old girl that he’d be dating them in a few years. In addition to that, there are all sorts of weird comments he has made about his own daughter, Ivanka, such as referring to her (when she was just 16) as “hot.” He would later refer to her as “voluptuous” and “a piece of ass.” Oh yeah, and wasn’t it Trump who partied with Jeffrey Epstein?
If you dig deep into any of the narratives being pushed by the Trumps, you’ll find they almost always involve logical fallacies (if Mike Flynn was railroaded, why was Trump fooled by the “deep state” into firing him?) or glaring cases of hypocrisy. It just takes a little time to digest and evaluate the charges and think rationally about them—which is admittedly hard to do when they are “flooding the zone with shit.”
If Democrats are smart, they won’t let him get away with it this time. It takes a lot of hard work to correct the record, and one always runs the risk that repeating a charge will have the unintended consequence of spreading it.
Joe Biden doesn’t necessarily have to be the person to point out these things, but how hard would it be during a debate for him to simply point out the logical fallacy? If Trump starts playing the victim, Biden should turn to him and say: “Donald, you were the president. You ordered the social distancing. If it’s a hoax, then you got duped. If it’s all just a hoax, then you ruined a great economy for nothing. We can’t re-elect a president who is so easily manipulated, Donald.”
Hypocrisy, thy name is Trump.
