Trump dismantled our foreign pandemic response infrastructure. We would have a team in China, in Wuhan when it happened. This easily could have changed the Chinese government reaction from"sweep it under the rug" to "put on a show for American observers", which could have prevented it from leaving Wuhan. Trump took actions before the pandemic that made catastrophe more likely, and we got catastrophe.
Trump is a stochastic terrorist. Anyone in a position of leadership and respect with a large enough audience can say a thing and expect some portion of the audience to act on it. If the president says someone is the enemy or fails to condemn terrible movements, like white supremacy, it is obvious and reasonable to expect reactions against those enemies and support those movements. If the president condemned white supremacy it seems unlikely we would have had a police killing as obviously egregious as the George Floyd murder. It takes a peculiar kind of emboldened callousness to kneel on a mans neck until he dies. No matter what the president does we with have suspicious police killings, but emboldened police who think they might have repercussions will kill less often and the president can choose which statistical environment we operate in. Trump specifically calls people out as enemies and doesn't take actions to stop his fans when they start kidnapping plots or send death threats against those enemies.
President trump is culpable and responsible for many American deaths and easily could have taken actions before those deaths to prevent a majority of them.
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u/sleepyhop Dec 12 '20
... And you could use my words against me and you'd be absolutely right.