Trump has gambled with our lives, and we’re the ones who are losing | Opinion
Four years ago, Donald Trump promised to “Make America Great Again.” Today, we’re living with the mirror image of that promise. America is stretched to the breaking point by a president who mismanaged a pandemic raging out of control and an economy teetering on the edge of a new Great Depression.
Does Trump’s America feel great to you?
His failures are so broad and the damage he inflicted on our nation is so deep that his skeptics could hardly imagine the devastation. Even Trump’s critics couldn’t foresee losing loved ones because of his lackadaisical response to a public health crisis. No one expected this president would invest his political capital in fanning the flames of lurid conspiracy theories, undermine his public health experts or refuse to follow medical professionals’ advice inside and out of government.
No one envisioned spending months locked at home, terrified of an unseen and unknown viral enemy, while they lost jobs, savings and retirement investments.
Where we are in July 2020 isn’t anyone’s idea of America at its greatest.
Trump’s lack of leadership has cost Americans more than our jobs, financial stability and health. It has cost us our time. Many members of our nation’s dwindling Greatest Generation have spent the months since March imprisoned in their homes for fear of COVID-19’s fatal consequences. Many are spending the twilight of their lives lonely, isolated and afraid. For them, Trump’s plan is a grim calculus no American leader should accept.
He considers the very people who saved America from fascism and communism to be expendable. If they have to die for the Dow Jones to go up a few points, it’s all worth it. And it doesn’t stop there.
Family reunions and summer trips have been canceled, graduations postponed and weddings put on hold. We can no longer share our faith as places of worship remain shuttered. Lifelong dreams have become nightmares as small businesses fail, jobs are lost and millions are left unemployed and unable to make ends meet. We cannot even appropriately pay our respects to loved ones who have died or grieve the losses of our way of life with those we love because it is still not safe to congregate.
We abandoned hope for those things because Trump’s failed leadership meant infection and death rates from COVID-19 have exploded for a second round. This president’s addiction to gaslighting the American public has cost us our confidence in the facts. As Trump has vilified or silenced anyone who speaks out against his skewed sense of reality, it is no longer clear who or what we should believe. We are incapable of making an informed decision about our response to the virus because Trump admits his efforts to suppress testing, conceal data and spread misinformation.
He has withdrawn us from the World Health Organization in the middle of our lifetime’s largest pandemic. He cut funding to the pandemic response team. He has withheld aid to his countrymen because he felt underappreciated by certain governors. He has, quite literally, played politics with American lives.
The political games continue, only now, our children’s health and safety is at risk. Trump has threatened to block funding to states who do not open brick-and-mortar schools in the next month. This comes as the United States leads the world in both COVID-19 cases and deaths and threatens our children, our families, our teachers and their families.
It didn’t have to be this way. Nations all over the world successfully flattened the curve and are starting to reopen responsibly. These nations all have something we do not: a head of state that trusts science, listens to experts and puts the good of the people first. Had Trump heeded the warnings and responded appropriately, we would have flattened the curve and returned to something close to normal by now. We have not.
The president’s mismanagement of COVID-19 has cost millions of Americans their jobs, more than 130,000 Americans their lives, and now threatens our children’s health and safety. We have lost four months of our lives and counting. How many more lives must be lost and dreams shattered before we realize that the only way to truly restore America to greatness is by removing this failed president from office?
Rick Wilson is a former Republican political strategist and a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a group of former Republican strategists, advisers and consultants dedicated to defeating President Trump.
This story was originally published July 20, 2020 at 1:38 PM.