Trump, Pence must resign to avoid pandemic catastrophe

Vice President Mike Pence convened the first Covid Task Force news briefing in nearly two months today and told this grotesque lie:

“We slowed the spread, we flattened the curve, we saved lives,”

He said this after the two highest single day infection totals since pandemic engulfed America in March with deaths exceeding 126,000. That lie was as delusional as if President George W. Bush addressed the nation September 12, 2001, and said “We slowed the destruction, the World Trade Center wasn’t flattened, we saved 3,000 lives”.

The opposite is true. The first wave is growing, not fading. There is no break from summer heat. Incompetent, criminally negligent federal policy has ensured the country would be divided on a collective response, guaranteeing failure. Hundreds of thousands, including tens of thousands unnecessary infected and dead, has been the result.

When challenged by a reporter who asked if the Trump rallies are adding to pandemic infections, Pence twice said that ““Freedom of speech, the right to peaceably assemble, is enshrined in the Constitution of the United States”. That is as irresponsible as defending the right of persons to yell “Fire” in a crowded theater as being ‘enshrined in the Constitution’.

But as untrue, reckless and life threatening as Pence’s comments are, he’s just following orders of his boss Donald Trump. Together they represent an existential threat already playing out with deadly consequences across America. Both must resign forthwith if America has any chance to respond anywhere near the lifesaving response of must countries. Only Brazil, currently mismanaged by Trump’s delusional soulmate Jair Bolsonaro, comes remotely close to America’s catastrophe.

People of note are beginning to say publicly that Trump/Pence are getting lots of people killed. That is unprecedented in US History. We cannot wait till November 3. We need the Barry Goldwaters of 2020, reprising the Goldwater clique that persuaded Nixon to resign over Watergate in 1974, to make that fateful trip to the Oval Office or Mar a Lago, to whisper that message in Trump’s ear. We need Trump to take that last sad walk to Air Force One, wave to his base, and disappear with Mike Pence in tow.

Our life depends on it.