In his column for the Washington Post, Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson said the enduring image that will come out of Donald Trump's tenure as the leader of the United States will be the president golfing as Americans hunkered down in their homes and the U.S. coronavirus death toll neared 100,000.
Trump's golf outings twice on Memorial Day weekend were roundly criticized and Robinson stated that history will not forget the president's blithe disregard for how he looked despite the best efforts of the Secret Service to keep the press from filming him.
"It was the murderous dictator Joseph Stalin who supposedly said that one death was a tragedy, one million deaths a mere statistic. One hundred thousand deaths are difficult to get one’s mind around. The toll in our nation from covid-19, as it reaches that horrific milestone, must be seen as a catastrophe — and an indictment," Robinson wrote. "The long Memorial Day weekend gave the pandemic an indelible visual image: President Trump, wearing a ball cap but no mask, enjoying himself on his Northern Virginia golf course. Last week, you will recall, Trump declared it was 'essential' that Americans be able to spend Sunday at church services. He chose to head for the links instead."
Admitting that the president is not solely to blame for the growing number of virus death, the columnist said it was on his watch and he had a hand in increasing the death toll with his callous disregard of administration warnings that a pandemic was possible.
"Not all of covid-19’s victims had to die. Some responsibility must be laid at the feet of a president who ignored the threat until it was too late, who failed to mount an adequate response and who still, after so many lonely deaths and socially distanced funerals, insists that the enemy will somehow just magically disappear," he explained before turning to the president's refusal to set an example for the public by wearing a mask in public -- even on the golf course.
"By the simple act of wearing a mask, Trump could provide a valuable, lifesaving public service. He prefers to indulge his personal vanity," he wrote. "It is shocking and unacceptable that the U.S. response to the pandemic, in terms of deaths per capita, has been among the least successful in the world. There’s nothing we can do about that now. The focus has to be on what happens next — and I fear that Trump is leading us past the 100,000 marker toward even more unnecessary suffering and death."
"But the election is coming, Trump is in campaign mode, and the only political technique he has mastered is the driving of wedges. He has made it a political statement not to wear a mask or respect social distancing. According to polls, most Americans are willing to follow the advice of medical professionals. Enough may follow Trump’s lead, however, to guarantee that the rate of infection and death remains higher than it has to be," Robinson wrote, before concluding, "The offense is not just that many of the 100,000 lost American lives might have been saved; it is also that more needless death is surely to come. Donald Trump stands indicted."
You can read the whole piece here.
