Well when you have the (lame duck) President promoting Covid hoaxes like this latest one below, what hope do we have of convincing people of the urgency of the situation?
Yesterday, Worldometers stated that 2,833 Americans died from COVID-19. The Covid Tracking Project puts the figure at 2,733. Johns Hopkins University puts the number of deaths Wednesday at 2,597. I’m sure some folks will point to the discrepancies as evidence of their inauthenticity, but different institutions are tabulating the deaths in different ways and from different sources. Worldometers is updated throughout the day, and the others aren’t.
I mention this awful daily death toll because earlier this week, the president of the United States retweeted a hoax picture claiming that a coronavirus patient-care site was empty, adding, “fake election results in Nevada, too!” The picture represented a case of online identity theft:
In the picture posted to Twitter on Sunday, the doctor, Jacob Keeperman, is standing at the Renown Regional Medical Center’s alternate care site in Reno, Nev. In the background, empty hospital beds covered in plastic stand in a vacant parking area. The photo was taken on Nov. 12, the day the site opened, so patients had not yet arrived, Renown Health said.
“I want to thank all the incredible staff who are Fighting the Good Fight to help all those suffering from COVID-19,” Dr. Keeperman, the medical director for Renown’s Transfer and Operations Center, wrote. “With 5 deaths in the last 32 hours, everyone is struggling to keep their head up. Stay strong.”
His photograph was then used by the account @Networkinvegas to erroneously claim that it showed a “fake hospital” that had “never seen a single patient.”
On Tuesday, President Trump brought that falsehood to a wider audience, retweeting the @Networkinvegas post with the comment: “Fake election results in Nevada, also!” Twitter flagged the president’s tweet, noting that the claim about election fraud was “disputed.”
In fact, the alternate care site in Reno has cared for a total of 219 Covid patients in the three weeks it has been open. And across Nevada, hospitalizations have risen 43 percent in the last 14 days, with a 55 percent increase in deaths, according to a New York Times database.
We’re witnessing more than 2,000 Americans perish from this pandemic per day, and the president believes that Nevada hospitals are creating fake treatment centers that have no patients in order to fool the public about the severity of the coronavirus pandemic. He’s got an entire government full of doctors and virologists and epidemiologists who will answer any question he has on this. He’s the president of the United States; anyone in the world will answer his phone call and happily and gladly explain anything he wants to know, walk him through any aspect that confuses him, and get him any answer he needs — particularly doctors, and particularly those who are trying to save patients infected with COVID-19.
The president of the United States chooses to believe the assertions of some account on Twitter, instead.
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-post-election-madness-gets-worse/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first
So some random troll posts something on Twitter, and the President amplifies that misinformation to his 88 million followers and countless more who then retweet it, because it serves to assuage his bruised ego.
To my point earlier in the lame duck thread. What has been on display for four years remains visible and blatant in his final days in office. Anyone who doesn’t see his personality and mental health challenges at this point has a disturbing trust for unsubstantiated information emanating from trolls and liars along with an unshakable knee jerk mistrust for mainstream media. If this describes 70+million Americans the worst is yet to come. We are in big trouble as a nation. The unfitness of Trump’s personality for the job he was elected for is now in dangerous mode and on display daily. He believes American democracy, American media, American healthcare system, American system of Justice, and American election and political system on the whole are fraudulent and fake - and he is attempting every day to convince the American people and influence his sycophants of the same. And this is occurring in the face of absolutely no evidence for his claims and during exploding illness/crisis. If any here didn’t previously understand that Trump places Trump above the truth and above America, above anything, then you only need to allow yourself a day of open-mindedness and willingness to look at what he’s providing for you and the world as evidence of narcissism and dangerous misuse of power.
He's a con man. A grifter. Cares nothing about the victims and collateral damage of his con. Only about lining his pockets. He's pulled off, so far, probably one of the greatest scams in history. He conned millions of suckers to vote for him and to enable him while he has actively -- and in plain site -- funneled millions of federal dollars into his business interests. And now he's using his fake 'Election Fraud!' campaign to raise money from all those suckers to pay off his campaign debts that financed the whole scam in the first place.
If he is not held accountable after he leaves office then he will have completely pulled it off.
I totally agree. I don't even think he believes it is a scam election at this point. But he sure knows that 200 million, most of which is being funneled to his PAC, will help him out in some way directly. So it is in his financial self interest to continue spouting all these lies, because he got millions of people to believe him and send him money out of it.
As others said, he is the biggest scam artist this nation has ever seen. If Trump or his family committed crimes while in office, or before being in office, I really hope that he gets prosecuted. NO pardons for him and the people that abused our country. This has been worse than Nixon, and it didn't stop for the whole 4 years. A national embarrassment that led to Trump lining his pockets and also led to more deaths than needed to happen from Covid. He was what everyone thought he was and worse during the 2016 campaign.
Of course truth always takes a backseat to perception -- and there are true believers in the narrative that Trump always tells the truth and the left-wing media is always fake. The Trump believers truly believe -- I don't think that it's dishonest. There may be odd reasons underlying why they believe / why they are prone to accepting conspiracy theories / why they are more susceptible to Trump's rhetoric. But their perceptions are valid even if what they perceive is misguided. And of course left-wing media IS biased and therefore should be approached with reasonable scrutiny rather than a blanket acceptance of truth. Same with right media -- I don't believe right-wing media is always fake, but should be scrutinized similarly to the Left for bias.
But Trump is on a different level. His lies are consistent and unrepentant, and often flatly and clearly disproven. Yet he is never wrong, never makes a mistake, and is highly skilled at spin and branding. His spins are better than most because there isn't a shred of ethical 2nd thinking that is associated. There is no value to ethics in Trump's brain. His whisperers (those like Miller, Bannon, Stone) are proud "dirty tricksters" and unabashed chaos producers - also without the burden of ethics to inhibit their actions. His secondary supporters -- those who know the truth yet go along with Trump -- are simply despicable and shameful, but none of us should be surprised as in many ways they reflect politics as usual (modus operandi for SOME on both sides).
But he gets off far too easy when we rely on crediting his gifting skill. Especially when we believe that he knows full well what he is doing. If Trump is NOT deluded -- in other words, if he truly believes that the election was not a scam -- it does indeed make him a world class con-man, but it also makes his actions (imo) far worse given the consequences. I can accept (at least understand) delusion, similarly to being able to accept the honest perceptions of his followers. But to KNOW he is conning the world, and to do it anyway, in this case is so far beyond the pale. Willingness to deny science for his ego, willingness to deny democracy for money and power, willingness to use his pulpit to pressure honorable Americans to engage in dishonorable practices, willingness to incite his people to aggress... These are beyond the scope of a typical conman who basically gets his or her gain from another's money and probably secondary gain via successful humiliation and the thrill of manipulating another's gullibility. Trump however has put our entire country at-risk for his own gain. And he is doing so every day. Pardon plans for self, family and cronies, monetary gains, sustaining his power base for post-election, diminishing America's (and democracy's) standing in the world, ignoring or falsely spinning the current virus crisis (you'll hear ONLY from him the great achievement of the vaccine - his accomplishment rather than science's, and already terrified that Biden might get some credit when the vaccine is effectively implemented), and purposely setting up his successor (as best he can) to fail.
Great con man does not tell the story of Trump. The damage he has done and undoubtedly will continue to do is potentially massive. He should be locked up. But if that does come to pass, I can only hope that the evidence is so clear, so overwhelming and blatant, that even some of his legion of supporters are swayed to alter their perceptions.
