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.
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: