With one chart, any Trump cultist reader is confronted with a question: Do you believe the President is an inveterate liar?
If yes, then you must explain why you embrace such a liar, and, BTW, who taught you that it’s OK to lie nearly as often as you take a breath? I’m not kidding, nor am I being provocative. That’s simply how it is with him.
And if you don’t think he’s a liar, then you have a far, far bigger problem. Here’s the chart of doom (I apologize for its clumsiness, I have not mastered Datawrapper):
What’s this? This is a timeline of Trump’s reelection campaign rallies, along with two dated tags: The one where he proclaims he knew it was a terrible pandemic all along (17 March 2020), and, giving him the benefit of the doubt, a tag only one month before, 17 Feb 2020. What do they show?
They show campaign rallies in Phoenix, Colorado Springs, Las Vegas, North Charleson, and Charlotte, with a total estimated attendance of 62,000. The dates were taken from Wikipedia, the link is in the chart; the estimated attendances were found in various sources, either Heavy.com (which is either pro-Trump or neutral, I couldn’t really tell) or local news sources. But the point, of course, is that a campaign rally is a prime place to spread the virus that causes COVID-19.
That’s right. If President Trump is not the inveterate and compulsive liar that the records show that he is, then he purposefully and maliciously lured his own supporters into a situation where a debilitating and sometimes deadly virus can infect them. And then they could go out and infect all of their friends and relatives.
For my outraged Trump-supporting reader, this is not a pack of lies to enrage you, and, unless you have personally visited a New York City hospital and verified the reports of ICUs being overwhelmed and hundreds dead are all lies, you’re stuck, before God and anything you may hold holy, with a harsh and grating question, and it’s not why you’re not planning to drop out of the Trump cult tomorrow.
IT’S WHY AREN’T YOU CALLING FOR TRUMP’s IMMEDIATE RESIGNATION?
That’s how serious – and simple – of a moral question this has become.
I suggest my conservative readers who’ve made it this far just accept that he’s a compulsive liar, and try to figure out how you can live with that fact, instead. The other proposition – that he deliberately ignored the good health of his supporters – should make you physically ill.
