Let's try to be fair in judging trump's killing over 100,000 Americans

[Visbek]

That is a real point of view, but I disagree with it. It seems to ignore the points I made, about trump's flaws - narcissist, sociopath, and more - that made him largely unable to 'do the right thing'.

They are *not* 'excuses' or 'justifications'. Yet they are different than someone *wanting* to do the wrong thing with killing a lot of people being a goal.

Are they?

To the consequentialist, the intention doesn't matter much, if at all. Killing someone because you're a narcissist instead of a sociopath doesn't make you more or less culpable, or your victims less dead.

You don't have to agree with that point of view, but it may be relevant in this situation. He had a duty, and he spectacularly failed to perform that duty, because he put his own desires above that of 330+ million people. In that respect, maybe it doesn't matter if that is because he's a sociopath, a narcissist, a megalomaniac and so on.

My the way, Trump and his followers are loaded up on excuses and justifications.

Look how seriously dysfunctional he is....

I didn't say he was fit for office. I'm saying that there isn't a big moral difference between being responsible for 100,000 deaths and 150,000 deaths.

 

[Craig234]

To the consequentialist, the intention doesn't matter much, if at all.

"To people who don't care about intent, intent isn't important". Must not say duh. Must not say duh. Must not say duh.

My the way, Trump and his followers are loaded up on excuses and justifications.

Agreed. Which has nothing to do with this thread, which is not about excuses or justifications.

 

[bluesmoke]

Why are you capitalizing "Himself" and "He" like that?

That's something done for religious purposes in religious writing (reporting guidelines say not to to do it), but not for people.

I can't think of anything more sarcastic for someone who thinks His book was the best ever written, as if He wrote it, next to the Bible. Who professes belief in God, but that He, Trump, has nothing to confess. And says Biden, a devout Catholic, would "hurt God" if elected. It is obvious Trump believes to be on a level with God as an equal, not as a subject. Looking to the heaven's and declaring to be "the chosen one". Pretending to know the Bible when we all know He most likely hasn't read a chapter, let alone a book or the whole Bible. It's a twisted fit in my reference to Trump.

 

[OceanBlues1]

Nancy Pelosi chose to go to a salon with only one other person in it. What does that have to do with Trump knowing how bad COVID was but lying about it?

NOTHING. Trump is still the top person responsible IMO. And he needs to be voted out of office by a landslide for Biden come November 3.

 

[bluesmoke]

Same as yours. Trump is in charge now so you blame him for the Covid deaths. Obama/Biden were in charge at the time of H1N1 and between 60-100 million people got infected. The difference is that H1N1 was much less lethal than Covid. Had it not been, we'd have had a massive calamity on our hands.

You don’t know how many will be infected with COVID because there is no indication we are anywhere near the end of the pandemic and we don’t know **** about this virus.

I know the CDC estimated the US H1N1 2009 pandemic death total at 60.8M. Where did you get that 100M figure from that you so obviously wish to make seem as though the total was much more than officially given?

The more lethal a virus is calls for the greatest response. Obama/Biden responded in measure based on science and limited the number of death (that’s what counts, you know) to 12,469. Trump, ever obsessed with outdoing Obama, blew by that number on April 7, 2020, only 9 wks after He took his first and lame action by lightly limiting China travel. Obviously, time will fly by when Trump goes 20 times the H1N1 death total.

Trump has completely ignored science, as His response reflects and He so eloquently communicates to the nation. That is to say, Trump’s “non-response”. Hence, the term “oversee” is what Trump DID NOT DO. He is on record as refusing responsibility.

BTW, had this virus been as infectious as H1N1, what would Trump's death figures be? You should get another hobby than debate.

 

[Guyzilla]

It's not being sarcastic really. It is an overstatement to say that trump's INTENT was to kill masses of Americans, just because he gets a kick out of it or made money from it.

Here's how I see his wrong right now.

As has so often been pointed out, trump is a sociopath and a pathological liar. That's repeated here for explanation. It means he's not capable of caring about others being killed or hurt. He can only care about how that helps or hurts him. And the truth has no value for him itself.

So what I think happened is, trump was given the facts about how bad the virus was, as he told Woodward.

But all he was able to care about was, it was bad news that could make him look bad, hurt his ratings. He didn't want to be a 'bad news' doom and gloom president. That wasn't his idea of being 'the greatest president ever' as he thinks with such incredible delusion.

And so, he did all he's able to, like a child, and just chose to say what he thought would make him look good at the time. How many times have you seen it said that that's who he is - transactional, why he contradicts what he just said so much, because he just says anything to 'win the moment'.

And what 'won the moment' for him was to say the virus was not dangerous, well under control, would be over soon. Not to say, 'this is a huge disaster'. And that's what he did, incapable of understanding the harm it would cause, incapable of caring about it.

In other words, what I'm saying is, the issue is that he is incompetent to be president - lacking the mental basic functions of a human being to handle a crisis like this. His incompetence to understand policy impacts or care about them, to care about anything other than his ratings moment to moment, led to the president being like a ship captain who couldn't stand to say 'avoid the iceberg' and sunk the ship.

I don't think trump had 'evil' intent probably, and even saying it was selfish - which it was - misses the point that his mental problems left him unable to do any better. If a ship captain with no arms wasn't able to steer the ship safely, it's true that that was the problem, but just saying 'he didn't steer the ship safely' wouldn't make clear why.

So, I think that's what happened, and how he is to blame. The virus arrived, and as someone utterly unfit for almost anything, he reacted based on his concern of how it made him look, and did what he thought he should, and just said what he thought would make him look good, not really able to act competently, to listen to the experts and their bad news for the country.

There's an old saying, 'when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail'. And trump's pretty much only skill has been to BS about problems. See problem, deny and BS. And it's the same reaction he had to the virus, except the cost was far higher than spinning his bankruptcy, or trump university, or his crimes paying off mistresses, and so on. Deny and BS.

EVILLLLLLLLLLL, is apathetic and total disregard for human pain and suffering. It does NOT require an active plan to CAUSE pain and suffering.

 

[Guyzilla]

Blaming 100,000 deaths on Trump is another example of why the left should not be allowed to lead.


.

Does believing that 6 million Jews were slaughtered. likewise sideline ones logic?

 

[Guyzilla]

If it’s really as meaningful as the left thinks it is then why didn’t Woodward have an ethical obligation to disclose it?

He thought Trump was talking out his ass, like usual.

 

[Guyzilla]

From OP:



His intent was narcissistic.

His intent was POLITICAL. He CHOSE to allow folks to drop like flies, SO THAT, he could blame his political rivals, and gain. That is INTENT.

 

[Grim17]

Does believing that 6 million Jews were slaughtered. likewise sideline ones logic?

Using another Hitler reference only reinforces my statement.

.

 

[Craig234]

His intent was POLITICAL. He CHOSE to allow folks to drop like flies, SO THAT, he could blame his political rivals, and gain. That is INTENT.

I disagree. It was only political in the sense that he didn't want to say it was bad if it would make him look bad - the narcissism. He had no master plan that he could somehow blame his political rivals, though it does appear he tried to sabotage blue states and help red states, seizing equipment from blue states, as a murderous political act as a secondary part of his mishandling of the crisis.

 

[Craig234]

EVILLLLLLLLLLL, is apathetic and total disregard for human pain and suffering. It does NOT require an active plan to CAUSE pain and suffering.

'Evil' is a debatable word. What you describe is his lack of empathy because he's a sociopath, aggravated by his narcissism. So it means nothing to him if millions are killed, if he benefits. Ya, 'evil' is not a bad word for that. But it's different that his motive being the killing of those people, like a dictator who had people tortured for his pleasure.

 

[tres borrachos]

NOTHING. Trump is still the top person responsible IMO. And he needs to be voted out of office by a landslide for Biden come November 3.

Couldn't agree more.

 

[bluesmoke]

EVILLLLLLLLLLL, is apathetic and total disregard for human pain and suffering. It does NOT require an active plan to CAUSE pain and suffering.

And another example of disparate impact in two ways. Regardless of provable intent/plan/instruction to do harm, the impact of what Trump had done and refused to do is harm. Secondly, minorities are most affected by COVID for reasons of racial disparity.

 

[veritas1]

You don’t know how many will be infected with COVID because there is no indication we are anywhere near the end of the pandemic and we don’t know **** about this virus.

I know the CDC estimated the US H1N1 2009 pandemic death total at 60.8M. Where did you get that 100M figure from that you so obviously wish to make seem as though the total was much more than officially given?

The more lethal a virus is calls for the greatest response. Obama/Biden responded in measure based on science and limited the number of death (that’s what counts, you know) to 12,469. Trump, ever obsessed with outdoing Obama, blew by that number on April 7, 2020, only 9 wks after He took his first and lame action by lightly limiting China travel. Obviously, time will fly by when Trump goes 20 times the H1N1 death total.

Trump has completely ignored science, as His response reflects and He so eloquently communicates to the nation. That is to say, Trump’s “non-response”. Hence, the term “oversee” is what Trump DID NOT DO. He is on record as refusing responsibility.

BTW, had this virus been as infectious as H1N1, what would Trump's death figures be? You should get another hobby than debate.

The H1N1 figure from the CDC was 60 million on the low end with possibly 100 million on the high end. The Covid total to date is 7.4 million over 9 months so a fraction of H1N1. So, you're saying that Obama made no effort to stop the spread of H1N1 because he supposedly knew what its lethality would be? That might even be worse than incompetence. Also, the idea that the Trump administration hasn't addressed this aggressively is simply BS. Why do we have effective therapeutics? Why will we most likely have a vaccine in record time? And this with a totally novel virus never seen before. We also cut off all travel from China save returning US citizens who were quarantined. That is not doing it "lightly." The really funny part is that Biden was asked what he'd have done a few weeks back and every single thing he said was something Trump had done long ago.

You spout the party line about Trump but the party line is at odds with reality.

 

[bluesmoke]

The H1N1 figure from the CDC was 60 million on the low end with possibly 100 million on the high end. The Covid total to date is 7.4 million over 9 months so a fraction of H1N1. So, you're saying that Obama made no effort to stop the spread of H1N1 because he supposedly knew what its lethality would be? That might even be worse than incompetence. Also, the idea that the Trump administration hasn't addressed this aggressively is simply BS. Why do we have effective therapeutics? Why will we most likely have a vaccine in record time? And this with a totally novel virus never seen before. We also cut off all travel from China save returning US citizens who were quarantined. That is not doing it "lightly." The really funny part is that Biden was asked what he'd have done a few weeks back and every single thing he said was something Trump had done long ago.

You spout the party line about Trump but the party line is at odds with reality.

The CDC estimate was 60.8M, period. I asked you where you got your 100M figure from and you couldn’t say so. No link, no nothing. I know what the top-end figure was that was still taken into consideration in coming up with the 60.8M estimate. You don’t deserve that link. You don’t deserve reply to the rest of the garbage you spew after evading my request for evidence until you supply said evidence or admit your error. You can’t back up your own word to support your unfounded claim, the burden of proof for which is upon you. See you on another thread.

 

[rickc]

There is no evidence that President Trump caused the deaths of 1, let alone 100,000, Americans.

Trump knew how deadly this virus is. Trump disregarded all the health professionals recommendations. He flaunted his distain for mask and social distancing.

He put the economy, profits for the wealthy, ahead of human lives. He wanted the expendables working

Draw your own conclusions

 

[veritas1]

The CDC estimate was 60.8M, period. I asked you where you got your 100M figure from and you couldn’t say so. No link, no nothing. I know what the top-end figure was that was still taken into consideration in coming up with the 60.8M estimate. You don’t deserve that link. You don’t deserve reply to the rest of the garbage you spew after evading my request for evidence until you supply said evidence or admit your error. You can’t back up your own word to support your unfounded claim, the burden of proof for which is upon you. See you on another thread.

You're all worked up about a triviality because you can't say what Biden would have done differently or better than Trump regarding Covid. The CDC estimate range was 43-89 million so a bit less than 100. Who cares? That doesn't change anything about what I said in the prior post. I imagine you'll take a faux victory lap now.

 

[bluesmoke]

You're all worked up about a triviality because you can't say what Biden would have done differently or better than Trump regarding Covid. The CDC estimate range was 43-89 million so a bit less than 100. Who cares? That doesn't change anything about what I said in the prior post. I imagine you'll take a faux victory lap now.

12% more is not a just a “bit”. More important and revealing than that, though, is you avoided giving me a direct answer when I asked for your evidence. It’s been shown you were prevaricating and being evasive of the truth, however you slice it. The evidence is, consistent with the Obama/Biden admin of the H1N1 pandemic, that Biden would have followed the science. Trump fought the science, and still does, every step of the way, recommending against guidelines and flaunting/mocking mask-wearing.

BTW, it’s obvious you care. You’re the one that went to lengths to avoid telling the truth of what you say “Who cares?” You're the one that cared enough to make up a false figure of 100M and still never provided the evidence to back up what you said. That makes it a lie.

 

[veritas1]

12% more is not a just a “bit”. More important and revealing than that, though, is you avoided giving me a direct answer when I asked for your evidence. It’s been shown you were prevaricating and being evasive of the truth, however you slice it. The evidence is, consistent with the Obama/Biden admin of the H1N1 pandemic, that Biden would have followed the science. Trump fought the science, and still does, every step of the way, recommending against guidelines and flaunting/mocking mask-wearing.

BTW, it’s obvious you care. You’re the one that went to lengths to avoid telling the truth of what you say “Who cares?” You're the one that cared enough to make up a false figure of 100M and still never provided the evidence to back up what you said. That makes it a lie.

Laughable. Trump hasn't fought anything. He's pushed hard for therapeutics and a vaccine. The idea that this thing will be conquered with masks is simply nonsense. There is nothing Biden could have done better or even as well. He hasn't offered anything other than what Trump has already done. He's got nothing. As for the 100M I did see a 60-100M estimate somewhere but, as I said, it's totally irrelevant. With a 3% +/- death rate which is what we have with Covid, that's 1.8 million deaths if 60 million get infected. That was how well Obama and Biden contained H1N1 swine flu. They just dodged a bullet that it wasn't something more deadly.

 

[bluesmoke]

Laughable. Trump hasn't fought anything. He's pushed hard for therapeutics and a vaccine. The idea that this thing will be conquered with masks is simply nonsense. There is nothing Biden could have done better or even as well. He hasn't offered anything other than what Trump has already done. He's got nothing. As for the 100M I did see a 60-100M estimate somewhere but, as I said, it's totally irrelevant. With a 3% +/- death rate which is what we have with Covid, that's 1.8 million deaths if 60 million get infected. That was how well Obama and Biden contained H1N1 swine flu. They just dodged a bullet that it wasn't something more deadly.

Trump has pushed hard to get a therapeutic or vaccine approved, regardless of effectiveness and safety. Such contention btx Trump and the FDA and CDC are in the media, incl Fox. He’s fought mask wearing and CDC guidelines ON RECORD. Visually. You can’t deny that, other than just saying so. But it ain’t so. Mask wearing will not conquer the virus, it will save many lives. That is scientific fact. But you don’t believe in science. Biden has offered a centralized response, which Trump hasn’t, and fed supplied PPE to the max, which Trump didn’t do. Trump used the DPA to force meat plan workers back on the job who had been dropping dead like flies instead of issuing and distributing mask.

Your honest is not totally irrelevant. You had a chance to correct yourself and provide the evidence of your source to verify your estimate of 100M. You didn’t. That was a conscious, disingenuous choice. Period.

You lie. 1.8M deaths is not how well Obama contained the H1N1 flu. It was 12,469 deaths. The bullet they dodged was one they would have managed much better than the Trump admin, who rejected the pandemic response team concept. Totally ignored it. Obama followed the science. Trump did not. The one time He did was the travel restriction on China, which was minimal. That’s the record.

You’re not a credible debater. I look forward to using fact to refute what you claim on other thread.

 

[veritas1]

Trump has pushed hard to get a therapeutic or vaccine approved, regardless of effectiveness and safety. Such contention btx Trump and the FDA and CDC are in the media, incl Fox. He’s fought mask wearing and CDC guidelines ON RECORD. Visually. You can’t deny that, other than just saying so. But it ain’t so. Mask wearing will not conquer the virus, it will save many lives. That is scientific fact. But you don’t believe in science. Biden has offered a centralized response, which Trump hasn’t, and fed supplied PPE to the max, which Trump didn’t do. Trump used the DPA to force meat plan workers back on the job who had been dropping dead like flies instead of issuing and distributing mask.

Your honest is not totally irrelevant. You had a chance to correct yourself and provide the evidence of your source to verify your estimate of 100M. You didn’t. That was a conscious, disingenuous choice. Period.

You lie. 1.8M deaths is not how well Obama contained the H1N1 flu. It was 12,469 deaths. The bullet they dodged was one they would have managed much better than the Trump admin, who rejected the pandemic response team concept. Totally ignored it. Obama followed the science. Trump did not. The one time He did was the travel restriction on China, which was minimal. That’s the record.

You’re not a credible debater. I look forward to using fact to refute what you claim on other thread.

You either can't understand what I was saying or are simply being obtuse. I said IF Obama/Biden had gotten hit with Covid and contained it as well as they did H1N1, they could have had 1.8 million deaths. You are also perversely hung up about me saying 60-100 million when the CDC estimate was 43-89 million. That's still a far cry from 8 million which is what we've had with Covid. Had Trump had to handle H1N1 and performed exactly as Obama/Biden did, we'd never see the end of the disingenuous whining and pants wetting by the left and the MSM. You know this. We all do.

Trump can do absolutely nothing, that the left doesn't attack him, not handle the pandemic, make trade deals, make peace deals, create jobs or ANY other thing, Their real anger is not that Trump has failed but that he has made them look totally incompetent by succeeding. The people blindly voting for the radicals out of hate for Trump must like incompetence, onerous government controls and a return to letting China and the EU abuse us at will. It's really quite sad but is what we should have expected after a few generations were turned out of the left run "education" system.

 

[NotreDame]

What are you basing that claim on? People knew what the facts were even if they didn’t come from Trump. He’s not responsible for the raw selfishness and individualism that permeates American culture and drives people to do whatever the hell they want to do regardless of the consequences to themselves or others even in the middle of a pandemic. He’s not accountable for the free choices of Americans that cause community spread and death.

He may have some responsibility for “the raw selfishness and individualism” as he personified both publicly in response to the pandemic. He led by example. Numerous public gatherings with no mask usage and not requiring masks. Numerous gatherings of people without adhering to social distancing. Misleading comments as to the lethality of the virus. Misleading comments about masks. Using twitter to instigate pressure for governors refusing to reopen their states, despite the fact the states had not satisfied the benchmarks adopted by the WH to safely reopen.

 

[NotreDame]

Community spread and death is what it is because the same choice Nancy Pelosi made has been made by countless other citizens every day throughout this pandemic. The point is that Trump is not accountable for those choices.

He may have, however, exacerbated the situation. The point is that Trump encouraged living as if there isn’t a pandemic and people did so because of him.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention some of Trump’s accountability is what he and his Administration failed to do to control spread of the virus. What he and his Administration failed to do is highlighted by a comparison to other countries that implemented measures and have achieved a measure success controlling the spread of the virus. South Korea, Ice Land, Taiwan, NZ, Japan, Canada, to name a few countries, are models of how to control and slow the spread of the virus.

 

[bluesmoke]

You either can't understand what I was saying or are simply being obtuse. I said IF Obama/Biden had gotten hit with Covid and contained it as well as they did H1N1, they could have had 1.8 million deaths. You are also perversely hung up about me saying 60-100 million when the CDC estimate was 43-89 million. That's still a far cry from 8 million which is what we've had with Covid. Had Trump had to handle H1N1 and performed exactly as Obama/Biden did, we'd never see the end of the disingenuous whining and pants wetting by the left and the MSM. You know this. We all do.

Trump can do absolutely nothing, that the left doesn't attack him, not handle the pandemic, make trade deals, make peace deals, create jobs or ANY other thing, Their real anger is not that Trump has failed but that he has made them look totally incompetent by succeeding. The people blindly voting for the radicals out of hate for Trump must like incompetence, onerous government controls and a return to letting China and the EU abuse us at will. It's really quite sad but is what we should have expected after a few generations were turned out of the left run "education" system.

With a 3% +/- death rate which is what we have with Covid, that's 1.8 million deaths if 60 million get infected. That was how well Obama and Biden contained H1N1 swine flu. They just dodged a bullet that it wasn't something more deadly.



If it was something more deadly, Obama/Biden would have handled it better than Trump. If Trump were handling H1N1, he would have done worse than Obama/Biden. If you “how well” would have been 1.8M deaths, I can better say 12,469 deaths because that was, literally, “…how well Obama and Biden contained H1N1 swine flu”.

Your “IF” uses figures that do not take into consideration what will most likely be in this pure conjecture/fantasy/fake scenario of yours. COVID death rate will highly unlikely end up at 3%. It has gone down, never up in any single day (as best I can read), since May. As of 10/18, the death rate was 2.8%. You could just as well had done your fake scenario on 5/21 when the death rate was 5.91% and it would have made just as much nonsense then as now. If you used the new death rate, being new deaths % of new case, the rolling 7-day avg is 1.28%, which is an indication of where the death rate is going, which Fauci estimated would end-up being 0.5-1.0%, or the median of 0.75%. The new death rate goes up and down with the “waves”, but overall trends down.

Even if you plugged-in figures more indicative of what will/should be in your fantastical scenario, this pandemic is no where near over. Cases and deaths are increasing again. Red states are ignoring the virus, where cases/deaths are skyrocketing, and opening with no or few guidelines. FL has no guidelines and even has a state requirement that no business can require mask.

You don’t have the evidence to support what you say. And, if Obama/Biden handled COVID as well as they did H1N1 by following the advice of scientist and med/health pros, they would have done better than Trump, who did not do so. That’s “…how well Obama and Biden contained H1N1 swine flu”.