Is Trump trying to get us all killed?

After following politics for nearly 70 years, I never thought the unthinkable: Is the president trying to get us all killed? No, not all 330 million of us. But enough to strike fear in every citizen who values life in this country. It started early in the most unpresidential of the 45 administrations under which we have been governed. Promoting life over death has never appeared in the Trump Play Book. But death constantly hovers over every important issue.

In foreign affairs Trump spoke of ending our forever wars but ended none. He came close enough to starting a new one with North Korea that Defense Secretary James Mattis slept in his clothes and prayed at the National Cathedral over Trump’s threat to visit ‘fire and fury’ upon North Korea. Trump withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, the most war saving measure in a generation, nearly igniting a second new war when Iran wouldn’t cave to his belligerence. Assassinating Iran’s top general and getting thousands of Iranians killed with crippling sanctions would have triggered massive retaliation had Iran the means. No wonder the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock hand just 80 tics away from Nuclear Winter.

But it’s on the domestic front that Trump’s death dance entered new territory. He campaigned on abolishing Obamacare which saved tens of thousands of lives bringing health insurance to 20 million. When pandemic struck, Trump didn’t fret the hundreds of thousands dead or destined to die. He split the country in two by covering it up, claiming it was a Democratic hoax, a nothingburger, to protect his re-election chances. He’s even given a death sentence to some of his most fervent supporters by packing them into his mask free rallies, while he brags about his being protected at the distant podium of fear and loathing. He’s encouraged Health & Human Services official Mike Caputo to warn “shooting will begin” if Democrats contest Trump’s inevitable re-election. Dozens dead in millions of burned out Western acres made nary a dent in climate denier Trump. “It will get cooler…just you watch”. When called out over his science denial, Trump replied “I don’t think science knows”.

Never before have these words applied to a president: “After me, the deluge”.