“Our People”: Donald Trump’s Only Concern in a Generational Pandemic is His Own Fate

In a new Washington Post article covering the Trump Administration’s failures to fight the coronavirus pandemic, the question was posed why doesn’t Donald Trump do more? Like any response, it is, of course, a few months and roughly 150,000 deaths too late, but the feature did a nominally decent job of diving into Trump’s inability to grasp the pandemic for what it is, venturing into his destructive obsession with Norman Vincent Peale’s “Positive Thinking” (which The Muckrake has covered extensively in the past) and his continued rejection of personal responsibility.

Hidden within the piece, however, was a terrifying anecdote. After months of death and brutal suffering, it seems that Trump’s attention was piqued when advisers began showing him reports that his supporters were being hit hard. “Our people,” they called it, emphasizing the political damage that could accrue should Trump not act. Supposedly this was what led to his “new tone” last week and a newfound interest in the trajectory of the disease.

As discussed previously, so much of the Trump response to the pandemic can be justly labeled as a genocide. For months, Trump played games with governors around the country, keeping them from life-saving equipment and supplies, legitimately stealing those supplies should they acquire them for themselves, and only doling out necessary shipments should he find the governors and local politicians “grateful” and capable of expressing public fealty. God knows how many people have died, particularly in New York City and so-called “Blue States,” simply because Trump didn’t care about American who didn’t vote for him.

Now, the truth is staggering, disturbing, and undeniable.

There is no plan. Trump’s only obsession is winning reelection in November, and the bet he took months ago was to pretend the coronavirus was “a hoax,” something that would simply “disappear.” In the case of sending our nation’s children back to school, the administration refuses to lead or provide funds for fear of actually helping public education. As any authoritarian would do, Trump has continually made the crisis worse and responded by blaming experts, conspiracy theories about past leaders and Democratic “traitors,” and, of course, China. This has been a matter of political survival, a game Trump has played in order to pretend the disease isn’t that bad, that the economy can be opened, and his reelection chances reinvigorated.

He has failed because he has not tried. To hear now that he is “interested” because his voters are suffering only makes the ugly truth more and more undeniable.

Let us be clear. Donald Trump has no interested in saving lives. As a post-politics politician his only goal is to dismantle government as an organ of public good and public service and pervert it into a clearinghouse for personal profit, consolidation of power, and expedited corruption. Any help he affords the American people is only ancillary to his main goal: continuing his pursuit of power and profit. When he hears “our people” are suffering, he thinks of votes. He thinks of elections. He thinks of possible prosecution, personal embarrassment, and an end to his project of purposeful demolition of the government.

Blood is on his hands and it is far past time that members of the media and the Republican Party accept the harsh truth of the matter. Trump is not a traditional president. He is not a leader and he is not interested in protecting the American people. He is only interested in himself, and the sooner we come to that sad realization all the better.

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.