Trump Fine With Letting Countless Americans Die From COVID-19 So He Can Pretend He’s Getting a Second Term

If there weren’t any real-life consequences to the president of the United States refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election and carrying on as though he’s totally going to to have a second term despite unequivocally losing to his opponent, the whole thing would be real gas. A 74-year-old man-child tweeting “I WON!” when he definitely didn’t and effectively throwing himself on the floor of the Oval Office screaming “I’m not going! No! You can’t make me!”? That’s pretty hilarious. Except, inconveniently, there are consequences. There’s the whole undermining of democracy thing, which is expected in dictatorships that hold sham elections but not the United States. There’s the national security factor, which Trump is putting at grave risk. And, of course, there’s the matter of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is getting worse and not better, and will needlessly kill an untold number of Americans because Donald Trump is a sociopath who can’t say the words “I lost.”

Speaking to the Daily Beast, multiple members of the Trump administration’s own coronavirus task force have said the president’s refusal to accept reality will very likely prolong the pandemic and result in more deaths, as Trump is not just waging pointless legal battles but is blocking customary transition work necessary to allow the next administration to hit the ground running on January 21, 2021.

Officials in the Trump administration working the COVID vaccine process, particularly those working on Operation Warp Speed, have been unable to communicate with Biden’s new COVID-19 task force about what plans they already have in place for distribution. Without close coordination on those topics, current officials say, Biden’s team could face significant delays in getting the vaccine out to the American people. “The vaccine distribution planning takes time,” said one senior health official. “And Operation Warp Speed has built up a huge database that is guiding their decisions about how best to roll out the vaccine. It’s essential Biden’s camp has access to this information so that when a vaccine does become available it can get out to the public quickly.”

With officials still trying to finalize a cohesive, streamlined operation for who gets the vaccine first and when, there is ample need for the outgoing and incoming administrations to be on the same page. Instead, they’re not even talking…. According to multiple individuals familiar with the matter, Biden’s COVID-19 task force has made outreach to governors a top priority. The goal, those sources said, is to create lines of communication with state and local leaders not only to assess what they need to fight the current wave of the coronavirus but also to ensure their constituents have access to a vaccine. But because Biden’s task force has been cut out of the Trump administration’s conversations, and data gathering as it relates to the vaccine, its members will face additional hurdles in ensuring it has what it needs to roll out a nationwide distribution campaign.

Not only is Trump making the pandemic worse by refusing to cooperate with Biden, but with his attention focused on fighting a clearly losing battle, he’s left the federal government’s COVID-19 oversight to Scott Atlas, the guy who thinks we should do nothing to stop the virus and go for “herd immunity,” a strategy that could require more than 2 million Americans die from it. This comes as the U.S. continues to set new records for daily infections—153,400 new cases on Thursday alone—with more Americans currently hospitalized with the virus than at any point since the pandemic started. In one Montana county, there aren‘t any hospital beds left. In North Dakota, the situation is so bad that COVID-positive nurses are treating patients.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s selfish stupidity has caused a whopping 10% of the people who are responsible for protecting him to contract COVID-19 or come into close contact with someone who has coronavirus, per the Washington Post: