Over this past weekend Trump went beyond his usual maniacal rage-tweet sessions and retweeted a conspiracy theory started by the laughable Gateway Pundit (stupidest man on the internet), who that said only 9000 people have died from Covid-19.
“So get this straight — based on the recommendation of doctors Fauci and Birx the US shut down the entire economy based on 9,000 American deaths to the China coronavirus,” said the summary of an article by the hard-line conservative website Gateway Pundit that was retweeted by the president, denigrating his own health advisers, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Dr. Deborah L. Birx
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More on this nutty (and cruel) game with statistics here.
Only an addle-brained mind would promote such a phony claim during a pandemic, but it's even more egregious if a sitting U.S. president does it for political gain with no regard for human life..
Newsguard, an organization that investigates the quality and transparency of websites wrote this scathing rebuke about Jim Hoft's disgraceful operation.
There is a big warning signed that says "proceed caution this website severely violates basic standards of credibility and transparency."
Twitter was forced to remove the tweet and retweets about this blatant conspiracy but it hasn't stopped Trump cultists from promoting it on social media. These types of conspiracy theories have severe repercussions throughout our country.
It's so bad that Dr. Fauci had to address it on Good Morning America this morning.
John Hopkins reports that the US has over 6 million coronavirus cases with over 183,000 deaths and Dr. Fauci was asked to explain why Trump would "retweet the theory that suggests only 9000 people have died of Covid-19 here?"
These conspiracy theorists are trying to claim that if you have an underlying condition and then the virus killed you that doesn't count as being killed by Covid-19.
As Dr. Fauci said, "They did" die from COVID-19.
"So the numbers that you’ve been hearing, the 180,000-plus deaths, are real deaths from COVID-19. Let there not be any confusion about that. It’s not 9,000 deaths from COVID-19. It’s 180+ thousand deaths," Dr. Fauci said.
Dr. Fauci has been shut out from the coronavirus task force since his straight talk has made him more popular by a landslide over Trump. Also, Fauci's reputation and honesty hurts Trump's spread of misinformation on the virus and Trump just can't deal with it.
But the amount of effort it takes to defend against these phony cures and nonsensical conspiracy theories only hurts America's efforts to combat this worldwide pandemic.
There is a big reason why the US has the most cases and the most deaths in the world with no end in sight.
That reason is Donald Trump.
