“To be honest with you...I wanted to always play it down. I still want to play it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”
Donald Trump to Bob Woodward, March 19, 2020
At the same time, one of Trump’s key rallying cries is how strong, resilient, and amazing the American people are, and how they are able to overcome any and all challenges.
And so, I’m left to ask, since I have not seen anyone else make this point (although I may certainly have missed it): How do we reconcile the notion that Trump can simultaneously believe the American people are strong, resilient, and capable of overcoming any and all challenges vs. needing to protect them from the truth and facts about a highly contagious and destructive virus, where the lack of knowledge about that virus would without doubt create both economic devastation and result in the deaths of tens of thousands.
These two views cannot be held simultaneously. And so, once again, we find that Trump is lying. Either he believed that the American people were strong enough to handle this crisis, or he felt he needed to step in and protect his “snowflakes” who couldn’t handle the truth.
The point I’m trying to make here is not that I’m surprised Trump has lied. Honestly, Almost everything that he utters are lies, and indeed, I find myself doing a double-take whenever he sputters something even remotely close to factual. My point is that the media, once again, is not seeing or neglecting the evidence of his lying when it is right there in front of him. No, there is no “Oh, as misguided as it was, perhaps he really was motivated to protect the public from panic.” His own words from the start of his POSidency has been on the strength of the American people his supporters.