Op-Ed: In 2020, it’s the stupid, stupid.
By Sam Youngman and Adam Parkhomenko
“Maybe I’m immune. I don’t know.” — President Donald J. Trump on 10/5/20
If COVID-19 only attacked brains, he’d be right.
But the virus doesn’t work that way, and the president is not immune. He is, in fact, infected, contagious and apparently dumber than dog shit.
Of course that last one has been evident for quite some time. Despite his claims of being a “stable genius,” Trump is the same guy who stared at an eclipse, can’t pronounce Yosemite and thinks the American military has invisible planes like the one used by fictional character Wonder Woman.
If you weren’t in QAnon or wearing a red hat, it became part of Trump’s persona that he’s not that bright. It was baked in; just another SNL impression imitating real life. But then Trump’s stupidity started getting lots and lots of people killed by a deadly virus. And before long, his dumb orange ass had it too.
Miraculously, that was when he went from dumb to dumber.
On Monday night, Americans watched their contagious president leave a hospital he shouldn’t have left, get on a helicopter with Marine pilots he could infect, fly back to the White House where more staff waited to be infected, walk to the building like he walks down a ramp, TAKE OFF HIS DAMN MASK and go into the building. Then he came back out to do another shoot for his propaganda film.
And he was still just getting warmed up.
By Tuesday morning, the president of the United States was back to where he started seven months and more than 210,000 American lives ago, comparing the virus to the flu and telling people to not be afraid of it. By Tuesday afternoon, he announced that he was killing the economic stimulus negotiations on Capitol Hill.
By the time this column posts, we’re assuming he will have announced that he’s going door to door killing Americans’ pets.
Because this asshole is either trying to lose this election, or he is too stupid to try and save himself.
Learning to live with the virus, as the president said we should all do, means lots of people will suffer and die and the American way of life — restaurants, schools, ball games, concerts — will be forever altered if not extinguished. If there was a sliver of hope in the recesses of the hearts and minds of voters that Trump was on some level taking this deadly pandemic seriously, it was forever snuffed out when DONALD-19 stood on that balcony and took off his mask.
But again, after four years of misspelling “Kentucky” and seven months of bleach and miracle talk, the country had already rendered its verdict on Trump’s intellect. Ending the stimulus talks, however, is a stupid horse of a different, stupid color.
Less than a month to go before the election, the unemployment rate is 7.9 percent, and more than 10 million Americans who had a job in January don’t now. No stimulus means those numbers are about to get way worse. As the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein pointed out, Trump’s cruel stupidity (our words) means that 30 million jobless people will see a permanent income cut of 50 percent, 40 percent of restaurants will face closure in six months, “tens of thousands” of airline workers will be let go and no more stimulus checks that pay for things like food and rent. It’s a death sentence for many small businesses.
Other than letting thousands of Americans die preventable deaths, this is the biggest, stupidest political blunder we’ve ever seen.
Democrats have basically been begging Trump to take their help. The rescue package they’ve proposed since May should have been viewed by the White House like a big fat Christmas goose from Ebenezer Scrooge; a way to juice the economy and the markets right before the election. President Stupid McStupid still said no thanks.
And then he went on twitter to let everyone know that he was the one who killed any hope of relief, sending the markets reeling and making damn clear to the American people who was to blame.
It was such a stupid move, we have to believe Trump will have one of his trademark flip-flops before the week is done. Still, stupid is as stupid does.
And Trump is not alone in his devotion to stupidity. Mike Pence’s team spent Tuesday arguing for FEWER precautions to be taken at Wednesday night’s debate. Mitch McConnell happily joined Trump’s call for no more stimulus and several Republican senators rushed to… well, just take a look at how Kelly Loeffler responded.
It has been almost three decades since James Carville said “it’s the economy, stupid,” and right now it seems kind of quaint. Because in 2020, it’s the economy, it’s the racism, it’s the deadly contagious virus and it’s a million other things Trump has handled in a stupid way.
Yes, this year, it’s the stupid, stupid.
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