205 Comments
User's avatar
Robyn Ryan's avatar

Perhaps a plastic bag?

H-Bob's avatar

We can hate Trump with the burning intensity of a thousand suns have some left for Woodward!

JCfromNC's avatar

He seems to take great delight in "pwning the libs" like the rest of the Right, saying things just because they'll piss off the Left. If he thought telling the truth about the virus would wind us up and give his base something to point and sneer at, he'd've done it in a heartbeat. But he wanted to keep stock prices up for a little while longer, and besides, it was mostly going to hit urban areas the hardest and they don't vote for him anyway, so he went with the self-serving lies. Like he always does.

_Pinkelman_'s avatar

Of course Trump didn't downplay the seriousness of the virus to protect the liberals. It's the opposite. Trump downplayed the seriousness of the virus because he expected it to hit Democratic-voting states and cities hardest. Late April he sidelined Kushner's coronavirus "A-Team" for the same reason.

Bebecca's avatar

I saw that story. People criticized him for a lack of faith and he said -well I believe in god but I still wear a seat belt when I get in a car.

Dial nein for German's avatar

Bread goes in, toast comes out! You can't explain that!

sgt. jmk de la résistance's avatar

Yup... the Party of Personal Responsibility can never be held responsible. Just ask them.

Zap's avatar

Of course it was the liberals fault!!!!

Bitter Scribe's avatar

I have no intention of reading even 12 words from this guy, but from Robyn's typically excellent synopsis, this basically seems like "It's not Trump's fault for saying and doing stupid things, it's the libs' fault for reacting to them." Which is yet one more variation on the "it's not me, it's you" theme that the Right has been playing, ad nauseum, for decades.

ciaobella's avatar

Spice will do that to you.

Cranky Man's avatar

The president is powerful, no no, I meant to say not so powerful. But who gets credit for the lowest unemployment numbers for the blacks? Oh, the powerful strongly president o course.

OneYieldRegular's avatar

My arms cannot even lift a spoon to combat Erickson's crass stupidity, but: not to put too fine a point on an unnecessary counterargument, Trump was acquitted by the Republican Senate on February 5th, and has spent the entire last eight months downplaying the virus for political gain.

Mavenmaven's avatar

plus, keeping in mind that the strain of virus that spread in the US was the European one, so it almost certainly did not come directly from China.

Cranky Man's avatar

Only Intelligent people can be intellectually honest. One does not have to be that intelligent, but you have to be able to beat a fence post at tic tac toe.

3FingerPete's avatar

Concurrently, we are not in a unitary state but have fifty semi-sovereign nations over which the President of the United States has very limited power.

Isn't that the Republican goal?

cmd RadicalLIBRaphaelWarnock's avatar

I read something today about a minister in Maryland who ran a nursing home that miraculously did well when everyone else didn't. Basically, he listened to what Trump had to say and did the opposite.