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[Reelya]

Man is he deranged. So the entire global coronavirus outbreak is a world-wide hoax / conspiracy against Trump to make Trump look bad before the election. He's like narcissistic personality disorder personified.

This is pretty much it for Trump. Faced with an unstoppable crisis that wasn't of his own creation, it's make or break moment when you see what someone is made of. Does he step up and lead the nation or does he turn to ineffectual jelly? He's chosen ineffectual jelly because it's easier.

[Il Palazzo]

Trump's now decided to tell his cultists the coronavirus is a hoax.

Man is he deranged. So the entire global coronavirus outbreak is a world-wide hoax / conspiracy against Trump to make Trump look bad before the election. He's like narcissistic personality disorder personified.

I don't think that's fair. He seems to have said that it's the dems' criticism of his handling of the virus that is the hoax.

[Reelya]

Sorry I was paraphrasing this:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/28/trump-south-carolina-rally-coronavirus-118269

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — President Donald Trump on Friday night tried to cast the global outbreak of the coronavirus as a liberal conspiracy intended to undermine his first term, lumping it alongside impeachment and the Mueller investigation.

BTW, I'm not sure it really makes a difference if you say "the virus is a hoax" or that "stories about the virus being a threat are a hoax". These people clearly are not that nuanced. These are hardcore Trump supporters we're talking about. Do they know the nuance here?

EDIT: here's some of the speech

Trump’s re-election campaign has made outreach to black voters a key pillar of its strategy. In his speech, Trump attacked Democrats’ record on race, saying they had “betrayed African Americans”: “They forced their children into failing schools. They shipped their jobs to foreign countries. They pushed their unfair sentencing policies, you know about that … and they favoured illegal aliens over their own constituents, you know that,” Trump said.

Yeah, the Republicans won't force kids into failing public schools, they'll abolish those schools then give you a voucher to spend on private education. You'll just have to make up the rest out of pocket.

And shame on you Democrats pushing those unfair sentencing policies targeting black folks.

Shame.

Vote Republican.

[Trekkin]

I don't think that's fair. He seems to have said that it's the dems' criticism of his handling of the virus that is the hoax.

He's certainly said that, too, but he's also (from the article Reelya posted) equated the coronavirus to the flu in severity, and appears to suggest that all warnings about it are overblown.

To be fair, extracting meaning from Trump's increasingly demented word salads is always difficult, so I'm also going off of what Mulvaney and Navarro have said. The message from the White House does appear to be that the virus itself is not as bad as has been reported in ways that stretch beyond journalistic interpretation (which would be fair) and directly contradict the scientific understanding of the virus, though.

[Il Palazzo]

Yeah, I don't think politico is fair either. One has to be hell-bent on bashing Trump to frame what he said as doubting the virus exist. He simply thinks he's doing a great job at managing the outbreak, since there's been no deaths in the US so far.

[Trekkin]

Yeah, I don't think politico is fair either. One has to be hell-bent on bashing Trump to frame what he said as doubting the virus exist. He simply thinks he's doing a great job at managing the outbreak, since there's been no deaths in the US so far.

Would CNBC be fairer in your view?

I don't think he's saying the virus doesn't exist, but I do think his claims that the virus' threat is being over-reported have lead him to contradict scientific facts about the virus itself.

[Reelya]

Yeah, that's more to the point. He's saying it's just a strong cold virus, nothing to see here, and all the news saying it's more than that is part of a scheme to try and make Trump look bad. So that includes the entire mainstream media basically along with whichever health experts chip in, the WHO probably as well.

[Il Palazzo]

Would CNBC be fairer in your view?

No, they're spinning it the same way. But e.g. the guardian, nypost or business insider don't. Or just listen to the speech.

I don't think he's saying the virus doesn't exist, but I do think his claims that the virus' threat is being over-reported have lead him to contradict scientific facts about the virus itself.

Sure. But that's not the message in 'Trump thinks coronavirus is a hoax'.


Can you please don't make me defend Trump?

[Trekkin]

No, it's not, but it's also not the message he's actually pushing. I was precise when I said he's telling his cultists that the coronavirus is a hoax. I make no claim to understand what, if anything, he is thinking, and his speeches are incomprehensible if read literally because they're targeted at people culturally disinclined to understand complete sentences or polysyllabic words. It is that level of understanding to which I refer, and his "this is their new hoax" is about the only thing that will fit in it, alongside his claims that it's like the flu and generally not bad and will one day vanish like a miracle.

Much like "fake news", the more comforting alternative he's presenting is beside the point; his followers are just going to replace reality with whatever fairy tale most suits them anyway. He has now given them license to do that, and thus has told them coronavirus is a hoax.

[Reelya]

I'm checking out the original feed for the Wednesday press conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx7lhj25__c

At the 1:05:55, Trump says about funding for the crisis, "if Congress wants to give us the money [...] Wasn't easy for 'the wall' but we got that one done!"

So holy hell, Trump's now rewriting history so that he got The Wall funding through Congress. Lose and fail to get it done, then say that you actually won and it was done. Much easier than to keep fighting.

Now, that's a classic Narcissist trait right there, which I'm familiar with from having known a couple of NPD people. They're so obsessed with image that they'll lie to you face that everything worked out for them. They know they're lying and they almost certainly know you know they're lying but as long as they keep proclaiming the face-saving lie they can sleep at night. From my NPD ex roomate, he'd tell one of these obvious whoppers then go hide in his room.

[Bumber]

So holy hell, Trump's now rewriting history so that he got The Wall funding through Congress. Lose and fail to get it done, then say that you actually won and it was done. Much easier than to keep fighting.

IIRC, he got some funding from Congress as part of a deal to end the government shutdown.

[Naturegirl1999]

Ah yes, that happened. Here’s hoping there;s not another one

[PTTG??]

I always thought that disaster movies where the President screws up constantly causing organized response to fail were stupid or unrealistic.

[MrRoboto75]

I always thought that disaster movies where the President screws up constantly causing organized response to fail were stupid or unrealistic.

This is the disaster movie where the prez believes there is no disaster.

Believe it or not its the sequel to the one where the prez believes a hurricane is going to go elsewhere than it actually was.

[Naturegirl1999]

I always thought that disaster movies where the President screws up constantly causing organized response to fail were stupid or unrealistic.

and now we learned that they are plausible