Time to Charge Trump With Negligent Homicide
– By Ed Kociela –
I am sick of Donald Trump.
I am sick of writing about Donald Trump.
But, as they say, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
So, we must once again examine this piece of human detritus and the tragic consequences of his failed presidency, especially after the revelation Sunday night that had Trump employed the best practices of science he could have saved 400,000 lives lost to COVID-19.
Dr. Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator from February 2020 until January 2021, told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta that after the first 100,000 deaths that came from the initial surge of COVID-19, “the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.”
It was the takeaway headline from a CNN special titled “COVID WAR: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out,” a frightening piece of journalism that gave us much-needed insight into the former administration’s mishandling of the pandemic, insight that could lend credible evidence to a prosecutor to charge the ex-president with negligent homicide for his deliberate lies and misdirection during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Birx had problems with Trump and those within the administration when she pushed for such safety measures as wearing masks and practicing social distancing. When she warned the American public about the runaway spread of COVID-19 she was chastised by the president, who, as he later admitted, was intentionally misleading the public regarding the status of the pandemic. During an interview, last January with “Face The Nation,” Birx said Trump “censored” her “science-based guidance” and that she was “deliberately blocked from appearing on national outlets for a time.”
She also dropped the chilling news that “there was no team, full-time team in the White House working on coronavirus.”
Instead, we had a president suggesting that sunlight and warmer temperatures would knock the disease out; that, perhaps, drinking bleach could serve as a cure; that dosing with hydroxychloroquine would save lives; all the while eschewing the use of masks and social distancing. In fact, even after being discharged from the hospital after contracting the disease, in a very Mussolini-like moment, he stripped off his mask defiantly and posed from a balcony of the White House. It was weak theater at best and immediately drew negative responses from some of the most respected infectious disease researchers in the world.
As late as last November Birx was advising that “There is an absolute necessity of the administration to use this moment to ask the American people to wear masks, physical distance and avoid gatherings in both public and private spaces.”
But, it didn’t happen.
Trump and his MAGA minions insisted that it was more important to put people back on the street to stimulate an economy that was beginning to nosedive prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was all about money, not lives. There was no compassion, no leadership, just divisive politicizing that polarized the nation even further.
The logical thing, as suggested by CNN, would be for Congress to create a commission to investigate the failures – intentional and otherwise – of Trump and his administration regarding the mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. However, as we have seen, Republicans continue to succumb to the flim-flam man’s dangling keys to the vault where, supposedly, vast amounts of campaign funds are sitting, waiting for him to dole out to his anointed disciples. Whether he holds that much sway as a wannabe kingmaker or not remains to be seen, but apparently, some have swallowed the bait, from Sen. Ted Cruz to the ugly racists in various state legislatures who have been working furiously to pass laws that are clearly an attempt at African-American voter suppression. Those people refuse to budge, counting on shirt-tailing Trump in the mid-terms and beyond. Somewhere, somehow, we are counting on traditional Republicans to find their spine and return to the ideology that was once a legitimate wing of our governance.
And then there is the decency factor, which seems to have disappeared from our political landscape.
What do we do for the families of those 400,000 people who lost their lives as a result of Trump and his wrecking crew? Will there be proper atonement? We certainly have not seen a shred of compassion or accountability for Trump putting the greedy needs of the upper 1 percent above those of the rest of us. He simply didn’t care and still doesn’t care, so long as the rich get richer. Perhaps a massive class-action lawsuit seeking redress from the federal government is in order.
It would not be without precedent, most notably the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, pushed through by former Sen, Orrin Hatch, to distribute reparations for people exposed to radiation from atomic testing and other federal nuclear programs. While it did not ease the pain of loss and suffering, it was an acknowledgment that the government was responsible for the unwarranted deaths and injuries to Americans poisoned by nuclear fallout and exposure. The government has since paid out $2.3 billion in RECA reparations. While I am sure any COVID-19 reparations would probably ring a higher total, it is still the right thing to do considering the tragic outcome of the pandemic. Negligence is negligence, whether by the federal government or private entity and there is plenty of evidence – from Trump’s interview with Bob Woodward where he admits to lying about the severity of the pandemic to his refusal to initiate best practices recommendations from the world’s scientific community.
When he was president, Harry Truman kept a reminder on his desk with the words, “The buck stops here,” a magnanimous ideal considering that there are many things that a president cannot be held accountable for, even on their watch.
The coronavirus is not one of those things. In fact, Trump was too busy passing the buck to accept any accountability for what happened – and, most importantly, what did not happen – on his watch. His collusion with Russia during the 2016 election and his inciting of insurgents who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 pale in comparison to the loss of 400,000-plus lives that could have been saved had scientific best practices been observed.
But they weren’t, so the idea of pressing ahead with negligent homicide charges against Trump seems like a pretty good idea.
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