Addressing a campaign rally in Sioux Center, Iowa, on Saturday, January 23, 2016, Donald Trump bragged that his “people” are the most loyal. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s, like, incredible,” Trump said.
Well, Trump’s wild and unprecedented prediction is playing out these days as more and more Americans become infected with Covid-19 and as more and more die. In essence, he has been standing in the middle of “main street, America” blocking efforts to lessen this crisis. More people are dying as a result, and amazingly, he is not losing any voters.
It would have been foolish to expect Trump to be able to manage this crisis, as he is woefully ignorant and incompetent. And according to mental health experts, Trump has a debilitating personality disorder, malignant narcissism, which is on display every day at his Coronavirus press briefings. However, he has been aggressive in gumming up the works, putting many more lives at risk than need be.
For some two months, Trump and his administration resisted calls to take the virus situation seriously. Consequently, they failed to install key people in essential positions or to follow the procedures laid out for them by the outgoing Obama administration, which had gained experience with Ebola and Zika. Just before leaving office, outgoing Obama officials ran an extensive exercise on responding to a pandemic for incoming senior officials of the Trump administration. But as expected, this heads-up was ignored.
But Trump and his allies went further than mismanagement. They belittled the Covid-19 crisis as something Democrats were cooking up to run him out of office since impeachment had failed. Unfortunately, Trump’s followers believe him and not what they hear on the mainstream media about the virus. That is dangerous.
Trump’s followers believe him even though, according to the Washington Post, he tells nearly 15 lies a day. At his coronavirus daily press briefings, he issues gems like these: “This is like the flu,” We’re very close to a vaccine,” and “Anybody that wants a test can get a test.”
Despite the failure of leadership by Trump, despite not handling, or mishandling, almost every issue, and lying profusely as the death toll rises, nearly half of all Americans say President Donald Trump is doing an excellent or good job handling the spread of the novel coronavirus,
How can that be? How can they believe that?
I have long wrestled with Trump’s statement that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters. I had to conclude that he knew something about his voters that I did not know. But I also concluded after watching them in action that his core followers are a cult, which operates in spaces where rationality does not dwell.
Is that it? Does Trump’s cult intensify with his continung exhibition of ineptitude and lies?
For decades I have proclaimed the power of talk radio (and talk tv) to sway listeners because most people are easily misled. And we have Rush Limbaugh and Fox News feeding their flock with falsehoods about the virus. But this belief that Trump is doing a good job in this crisis is an extraordinary level of faith in the face of his painfully obvious lies, pettiness, and ineptness, as the toll rises on infections and deaths.
As many states are mandating sheltering-in-place, others gleefully ignore such actions, for example, Republican governors in Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. The governors of Alabama and Mississippi say they are not California or New York and do not need to shelter in place. What do the data say?
Alabama has fewer cases than California, but at their rate of increase may have a greater need to shelter in place. In the period March 20 – 27, the number of confirmed cases in California increased by an average of 22 percent each day. During the same period, the number of confirmed cases in Alabama increased an average of 32 percent each day, almost as much as New York, which was 33 percent per day.
Whatever the reason for this failure to face facts, I am convinced that an ongoing massive fact-stating campaign is needed in this country.
