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- Jun 15, 2018
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Yeah I get your points and agree with half of it but I think the supposed accomplishments are overstated, and there's extremely valid points of criticism beside his personality.
Still strongly disagree that "no one would have handled it well". Yeah we have a lot of big cities. But even the cases per million are topped with rural states that didn't see mask mandates, stay-at-home orders, etc. We're not the only country with dense cities and lots of travel, and we basically do the worst. There was no national leadership on how to slow the spread or deal with those affected by closures. If he actually did help lead us through this, he could've become beloved in spite of all his other flaws. But he didn't, and turned what could've been a unifying issue in an election year into a divisive one. No one would've locked the virus out of our country, but virtually any competent politician could have done a better job than him and would've won another term.
I guess we can just agree to disagree. A virus which had already spread throughout major cities before it was even recognized that didn't have any way of testing for it on a broad, national scale was gripping our country. I live in NYC, I saw refrigerated trucks filled with dead bodies and heard about hospitals overrun with patients. There was no way on earth we were containing this thing.
Trump consistently downplayed the virus, then held stupid briefings where he said some idiotic shit but his Operation Warpspeed did cut through a ton of red tape in getting a vaccine delivered which he did in months not years. Yes I understand he didn't create the vaccine and that a United States company didn't develop it (well they did with the help of European scientists) but the way he approached the creation and the distribution of the vaccine should have been hailed as a victory. Trump was never going to be liked because he is an ASSHOLE and his accomplishments will always be overshadowed by that fact. I do not think there is a politician on this planet that would have saved the hundreds of thousands of lives because, at the end of the day, short of imposing marshal law on the entire country, the people of America want to be free. They don't want to wear masks, they want to do what they want to do. Trump empowered these people (another mis-step I think we can both agree on) and down played the severity of the disease.
My grandmother got CoVID after thanksgiving because the people around her simply didn't understand the virus.. They were ignorant of the disease because they hadn't seen what it can do for itself. I got CoVID this summer as well - it hits different when someone you know and care about gets it and has to be hospitalized.
A very good leader would try to bridge the gap between the people who think its a Chinese Virus Hoax and the people who understand its a very serious fucking disease so I think we are kind of agreeing without really agreeing.
Either way, my point is that covid would have sucked big balls with or without Trump and maybe he made it suck more balls or maybe he didn't. That's a hypothetical no one would really know. The other point I am making is that he's an asshole and his accomplishments will always be under-rated because of how big of an asshole he really is.