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And today, right on cue, comes the gaslighting. @realDonaldTrump pretends he was being sarcastic yesterday about the light/disinfectant suggestions. It's blisteringly obvious that he was being serious. His tone is earnest, inquiring, excited about the possibilities 1/x
2/ the possibilities he sees in this interesting avenue he's instructing his medical experts to explore. He even follows up on the suggestion in a direct address to Dr. Birx. We have the video. He made the remarks on national television.
3/ But that's the problem, right? We've HAD the video, over and over again. He just lies about having said the thing we all heard him say, or pretends it was a joke, or cries fake news.
4/ Let's pretend for just a minute that he *was* being sarcastic yesterday. He wasn't, but let's say he was—let's say he spent several minutes in a nationally televised address on a day when the virus's death count in our country passed the 50,000 mark—
5/ let's say he spent those minutes *jokingly* suggesting to his medical team that they should look into this harebrained idea (because in order to be sarcastic about it, he'd have had to mean it as a joke, something absurd)—how DARE he.
6/ How utterly offensive and dangerously reckless. 50,000 Americans dead and the count is still rising. Frontline healthcare workers dying because they don't have enough protective equipment. It would be grossly irresponsible
7/ for the President to stand before the nation and make jokes about quack treatments when our loved ones are DYING. Irresponsible, callous, and criminally reckless.
8/ There are people who believe what he says, and some of them—read the comments of any major outlet today and you'll find them—will take his "suggestions" at face value and wind up harming themselves.
9/ He wasn't being sarcastic. But if he were, he ought to be removed from office immediately for endangering lives.
10/ No, he was being serious yesterday—again, watch the video; it's painfully clear—spouting a theory and adjuring Dr. Birx to look into it. The President of the United States directed his top medical consultants to invest precious time and resources into exploring nonsense—
11/ instead of making progress on the basic steps we KNOW are necessary for combating COVID-19. We need widespread testing, contact tracing, and appropriate levels of PPE. Dr. Birx knows that. Congress knows that.
12/ Trump is surrounded by enablers who consistently excuse and spin his unhinged ramblings and malignant narcissism.
13/ Today's gaslighting means his team KNOWS his words yesterday were nonsensical and potentially dangerous. Their mission today is to convince all of us we're overly sensitive, literal-minded babies who just can't appreciate a good joke.
That's not what happened yesterday. The gaslighting is as criminally irresponsible as the suggestion that the nation's medical experts should investigate injecting patients with disinfectant. 14/14
