It's a thorough piece of opinion journalism that in 1960 would have helped end Trump's candidacy. But then, if it was 1960 and the country actually valued journalism, Trump would have been disqualified so long ago. In 2024, it probably won't be read by more than a handful of Trump followers, and even they will just sneer at it as confirming their biases about liberal elites.
I'm becoming more and more cynical about November. Swing states are polling way too heavily for Trump - he's leading in most and barely not in just a few. To me the NYT article seems obvious and impossible to dispute, but at this point we've fully partitioned ourselves as a country between those who can spot a con man and those who can't. To those who can't, we let Trump's nihilism metastasize and it's probably too late.
Too much of the country is in the throes of mass delusion, thank you Rupert Murdoch, and I'm pretty sure American democracy has only a few months left to live. I'd love to see a plan, any plan, that realistically leads to a different result. And I am going to vote in November for Biden, or whoever replaces him. But I no longer believe America's ability to do the right thing, even after it's tried everything else (as the saying goes). Now, we've tried Trump and somehow are choosing the vehemently, obviously wrong thing.
Until then, this piece is just a nice epitaph, a "we told you, you should have known" that will remind any MAGA recidivists who eventually experience leopards eating their faces after November, when Trump's next presidency inevitably reveals itself to be an autocratic destruction of American self-rule.
COVID spread is exponential growth, and his early misinformation, failure of leadership, refusal to believe in the danger, and continued botched response was responsible for likely hundreds of thousands of American deaths. Certainly his followers refused to mask and were aggressively in denial even when in hospitals on ventilators. We're at over 1.2 million deaths, and in my opinion even that attribution is conservative.
When even a single American is killed via incompetence by our government, it's congressional hearings and crucifixion. When we have an external force do it, like a certain event in 2001, no price is too high for retribution and deterrence. This man is responsible for 100x those American deaths? Let's make him the most powerful human on the planet.
Yet Hillary Clinton was investigated for years and judged “morally reprehensible” because of four deaths in a terror attack at an embassy where there was never any evidence she could have known or done anything.
I'm sensing a pattern here. Democrats attempt to govern. Republicans obstruct and make dangerous cuts to programs, resulting in disaster. Republicans attempt to shift blame to Democrats. Just enough swing state voters fall for this shit over and over again, allowing the cycle to repeat indefinitely.
it probably won’t be read by more than a handful of Trump followers
In actuality, most would not care, even if they believed it. They have unshakable faith that their god-emperor will be coming again to save the country from woke and put us on the path of Christian righteousness.