An Effective Political Strategy - The Trump Administration Played Politics With the Pandemic and Oversaw Genocide
From the very beginning it was obvious that President Donald Trump was playing politics with the pandemic. On March 27th, The Muckrake called it genocide, citing Trump’s supplying of protective equipment and resources based on political fealty and favor. As stated then, it is not necessary for genocides to involve guns, concentration camps, or even acts of outright, physical violence. The denial of resources based on political identification is more than enough, and now the proof is rolling in. In a recently published Vanity Fair article entitled “How Jared Kushner’s Secret Plan Went ‘Poof Into Thin Air,’”, Katherine Eban detailed how son-in-law Jared Kushner worked with private individuals to formulate a plan to test Americans for the pandemic, but how Trump, his administration, and possibly even Kushner himself submarined those plans, in part because damning Democratic-controlled “Blue States” provided “an effective political strategy.”
It isn’t exactly surprising that Trump and his cronies would play such political games. From the beginning of this massive, generational public health crisis, he has scapegoated China, promoted fabricated protest “movements” funded by members of his own administration, and repeatedly cited Democratic opponents as being members of a poisonous conspiracy against his presidency and, by proxy, the American people.
What’s more, Trump’s concern has less to do with his voters, or, as administration officials have called them “our people”, than his own electoral fate. Here, we have a presidency with no concern whatsoever with actually protecting America, the Constitution, or anyone besides the president himself.
This situation grows worse by the day. Most of America’s states are victims now of “uncontrolled spread” of the pandemic and daily death tolls are rising. Schools will reopen soon with no plans whatsoever to make students safe and no science-based infrastructure available to help that hasn’t been corroded and perverted by the Trump Administration.
We are in the throes of an authoritarian cycle that is only picking up steam. Just this week, Trump has threatened to “delay” the presidential election, a veiled threat that politicians, pundits, and citizens alike have reacted to with sheer terror and, unfortunately, more resigned belief that such a thing could never happen.
None of this should have ever happened. None of this should even be possible. The President of the United States has damned hundreds of thousands of Americans to death and unbelievable suffering and longterm personal and financial suffering, all because it was “effective political strategy” to have it happen on the watch of his political opponents.
This is uncharted territory for the United States of America. We are growing more numb and accustomed to this madness with every passing day. This story regarding Kushner’s aborted plan and the political strategy behind its abandonment should lead to people in the streets, calls for resignation, impeachment, and criminal charges. It is the act of a president at war with his own country.
We cannot become complacent. We cannot accept this horrible nightmare of a reality.
Jared Yates Sexton is the author of American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed its People, available for pre-order from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Politico, and elsewhere. He currently serves as an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.
