Outrageous Trump Rants Obscure Real Damages Of His Years Of Rule
“It (COVID-19) is going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear,” then-President trump announced on Feb. 27, 2020, at a White House meeting with African American leaders.
On Jan. 1, 2021, the U.S. passed 20 million cases of COVID-19, representing an increase of more than one million over the past week.
Lost in the fog of trump’s latest outrageous, absurd and damaging rants are three issues that define the incompetence, irresponsibility, corruption and destruction of the trump years, COVID-19 policies, foreign payments and climate change.
Trump’s cavalier, irresponsible reactions and his attempts to politicize the COVID-19 pandemic led to thousands of unnecessary deaths. His acceptance of millions of dollars from Chinese visitors at the trump hotel was a gross assault on the constitution’s prohibition from presidents benefiting personally from their post. Trump’s continual ignorance and resistance to taking legitimate measures exacerbated the growing, existential threat of climate change.
COVID-19
In early March 2020, as the pandemic was rapidly spreading around the world, Didier Raoult and his colleagues in Marseille, France, were experimenting whether hydroxychloroquine, a well-known malaria drug, could be the magic bullet to end the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.
There were no clinical trials to prove the drug worked or didn’t work but that did not deter trump from hyping the value of the unproven drug. In April 2020, trump addressed the nation in his daily White House coronavirus briefings and again urged Americans to take hydroxychloroquine to fight COVID-19.
Trump’s praise for the drug boosted demand for it and consequently created severe shortages for lupus patients and other longtime patients who have long used it as a legitimate, anti-inflammatory. Overdoses also were reported in the U.S. and Nigeria as frightened individuals attempt to self-medicate.
“In France, they had a very good test,” trump said. “But we don’t have time to go and say, ‘Gee, let’s take a couple of years and test it out, and let’s go and test with the test tubes and the laboratories.’”
“What do you have to lose? Take it,” trump said, while bragging that the U.S. had amassed 29 million doses of the drug.
A new study shows that thousands of people who took hydroxychloroquine, indeed, had something to lose, their lives. The study published in the journal Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, shows that use of hydroxychloroquine to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the early stages of the pandemic may be responsible for as many as 17,000 deaths across six countries. Among the nearly 17,000 deaths linked to the drug, researchers said that more than 12,000 occurred in the U.S. alone.
The drug became popular in the midst of hundreds of trials worldwide to determine its efficacy against the virus. But doctors did not have many tools available and despite insufficient evidence they began to treat high-risk patients with the drug in hospitals, according to the study.
Researchers reported that the drug was used instead of more effective treatments, despite dangerous side effect, including potential cardiovascular issues. The researchers collected data from more than 1 million deaths in the six nations, including around 900,000 in the U.S. They compared mortality rates of the average hospitalized COVID patient to the mortality rate of patients prescribed hydroxychloroquine.
Use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 was quickly debunked by scientists but trump and many other political figures continued to endorse the drug as a legitimate COVID-19 treatment.
“I’m taking it — hydroxychloroquine. … Right now. Yeah,” trump told a roundtable of restaurant executives on May 18, 2020. “A couple of weeks ago, I started taking it. … Because I think it’s good. I’ve heard a lot of good stories.”
By August 2020, the U.S. had more than 6 million confirmed cases.
Hydroxychloroquine was not the only unproven, fishy treatment that was irresponsibly and chaotically promoted by trump. In April 2020, he touted the use of disinfectant and ultra-violet rays as possible treatment.
“I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs,” trump said.
There have been no studies about the number of people who took trump’s bogus advice. There is proof that disinfectants can kill viruses on surfaces, but not once the virus is inside the body. Doctors appealed to people not to ingest or inject disinfectant, not only because it won’t work but it may have deadly consequences.
“Injecting bleach or disinfectant at the dose required to neutralize viruses in the circulating blood would likely result in significant, irreversible harm and probably a very unpleasant death,” said Rob Chilcott, professor of toxicology at the University of Hertfordshire.
A spokesperson for Lysol and Dettol responded to trump’s comments, saying, “We must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route).”
Around the same time, trump floated the hare-brained idea of exposing people with the virus to “ultraviolet or just very powerful light.”
“I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute — that’s pretty powerful,” trump said.
Some evidence shows that viruses on surfaces may die quicker when exposed directly to sunlight. But it is unclear how much or how long the exposure must be to have an effect but it is clear that sunlight will not stop viruses from replicating in the body.
“UV irradiation and high heat are known to kill virus particles on surfaces,” said Dr. Penny Ward, visiting professor in pharmaceutical medicine at Kings College, London. But “neither sitting in the sun, nor heating, will kill a virus replicating in an individual patient’s internal organs.”
Trump’s persistent denial of the seriousness of the pandemic has reverberated to current attitudes, particularly in Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has made his state’s response to the pandemic as a key part of his presidential campaign.
Last week, Florida’s surgeon general Joseph Ladapo called for a halt “to the use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines,” citing a discredited theory that the vaccine can contaminate a person’s DNA.
Ladapo said he previously raised questions about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but the agency provided “no evidence” to refute his claims. Ladapo claimed that use of the vaccines could “integrate” with the DNA of the person getting the vaccine, causing a host of harmful side effects.
In a letter to Ladapo, the FDA discredited each of his claims and noted that there have been over one billion shots administered worldwide, and no safety concerns related to residual DNA have been identified. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said it is “quite implausible” that the vaccines could contaminate someone’s DNA.
“Perpetuating references to this information about residual DNA without placing it within the context of the manufacturing process is misleading,” Marks wrote.
Marks said the FDA stands by the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, and there is substantial evidence that they reduce severe disease and death. He warned that false and misleading information leads to low use of vaccines. “Given the dramatic reduction in the risk of death, hospitalization and serious illness afforded by the vaccines, lower vaccine uptake is contributing to the continued death and serious illness toll of COVID-19,” Marks said.
CLIMATE CHANGE
“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” Tweet by trump in 2012.
Climate change has brought about record heat and drought, deadly storms, wildfires and rising sea levels but during his four years in office, the trump administration bulldozed environmental laws, dismantling major climate policies and cutting many rules governing clean air, water, wildlife and toxic chemicals.
Trump’s actions had an irreversible effect on global warming. A January 2021, N.Y. Times analysis reported that nearly 100 environmental rules were reversed, revoked or rolled back under Trump. More than a dozen other potential revocations were in progress but were not finalized by the end of trump’s term.
The rollbacks weakened Obama-era limits on planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and from cars and trucks; cancelled protections for more than half the nation’s wetlands; and withdrew the legal justification for restricting mercury emissions from power plants. The trump Interior Department opened up more land for oil and gas leasing by limiting wildlife protections and weakening environmental requirements for projects.
The Climate Deregulation Tracker, run by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, documented more than 130 measures taken under trump to scale back the fight against climate change. They included withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, which committed the U.S. and 187 other countries to keep rising global temperatures below 2C; replacing Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which would have limited carbon emissions from coal and gas-fired power plants, with the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which had weaker regulations; and attempts to freeze fuel efficiency standards imposed on new vehicles, and prevent California from setting its own emissions rules.
Scientists have long warned that if greenhouse gases in the atmosphere passed 400 parts per million, staving off a warming of 2 degrees Celsius would become much harder. The Paris climate accord agreed that failing to keep warming at or below 2 degrees Celsius would likely cause planetary rising sea levels, stronger storms, widespread droughts and heat waves, and mass die-offs of coral reefs. Withdrawing from the landmark Paris climate accord was an ominous warning of trump’s ill-founded attitudes about climate change.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere first hit 400 parts per million in 2016, the year trump was elected. By the end of the trump tenure, carbon dioxide levels more than doubled, to 417 parts per million, the highest level recorded in human history. Trump sacrificed cutting emissions in the name of economic growth but his wholesale assault on climate change rules did not bolster the economy.
Here are a few of trump’s more appalling statements regarding climate change:
“We must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse.”
“I don’t think it (climate change) is a hoax, I think there’s probably a difference. But I don’t know that it’s manmade.”
“It’s freezing in New York — where the hell is global warming?”
“The environment is very important to me. Someone wrote a book that I’m an environmentalist.”
“The badly flawed Paris Climate Agreement protects the polluters, hurts Americans and cost a fortune. NOT ON MY WATCH!”
“The weather has been so cold for so long that the global warming HOAXTERS were forced to change the name to climate change to keep $ flow!”
FOREIGN PAYMENTS
Trump has led the constant drumbeat of how President Biden allegedly profited through his son, Hunter’s, business dealings. Other than wild innuendo, there’s been no proof of such claims but there’s a warehouse full of evidence that while in office, trump violated the Constitution when his private businesses raked in millions in payments from foreign governments, including China. The information is included in a 156-page document released by the House oversight committee.
The report outlines how four businesses owned by the trump family received at least $7.8 million in payments in total from 20 countries during his four years in office. The report said the committee had received limited information from Maser, the former trump accountant, and that the payments probably represented a fraction of foreign payments to trump and his family during his administration, which ran from 2017 to 2021.
The foreign emoluments clause of the constitution bars the acceptance of gifts from foreign states without congressional consent. Trump ignored his campaign promise and refused to divest from his businesses or put them into a blind trust and instead left his adult sons to manage them.
Records show that while in office, that just four of the more than 500 entities trump owned, received more than $5.5 million from the Chinese government and Chinese state-owned enterprises, and millions more from 19 other foreign governments including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
The four properties receiving foreign payments include Trump International Hotel in Washington, Trump Tower and Trump World Tower in New York, and Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. Countries spent “often lavishly” on apartment and hotel stays at trump properties “personally enriching President Trump while he made foreign policy decisions connected to their policy agendas with far-reaching ramifications for the United States.”
The biggest spender was China, with a tab of nearly $5.6 million at Trump Tower in New York and Trump International Hotels in Washington, D.C. and Las Vegas. Other amounts included: Saudi Arabia, $615,000; Qatar, $466,000 ; $303,000 from Kuwait; $283,000 from India; $249,000 from Malaysia; $155,000 from Afghanistan; $75,000 from the Philippines; and $65,000 from the UAE.
“The governments making these payments sought specific foreign policy outcomes from President Trump and his administration. Each dollar … accepted violated the constitution’s strict prohibition on payments from foreign governments, which the founders enacted to prevent presidents from selling out US foreign policy to foreign leaders,” said the committee chair, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.
The report, called “White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premiers Paid Off President Trump,” relies documents obtained from trump’s accounting firm, Mazars.
“As a candidate, Donald Trump accused China of stealing U.S. jobs, orchestrating ‘the greatest theft in the history of the world,’ and ‘raping’ the United States with its trade policy,” the report says. “In office, however, President Trump’s public rhetoric and engagement with the P.R.C. initially softened. While then-President Trump’s policies toward the P.R.C. were frequently inconsistent, they repeatedly deviated from the combative approach he articulated when he made China bashing a pillar of his 2016 campaign.”