Four more years?
By Dr. Harold A. Black
blackh@knoxfocus.com
haroldblackphd.com
I am suffering from Trump Fatigue Syndrome (TFS).
Trump dominates the news. When he was president, 92% percent of the media coverage of him was negative. Amazingly – but not surprising – Biden has received less negative media coverage than any president on record. Who was it that said that the legacy media was the PR arm of the Democrat party?
There is a new COVID variant afoot and Biden is wearing a mask. The CDC and the media are already starting to raise the possibility of masks and mandatory vaccinations. I thought this was the “my body my choice” crowd.
Trump has a video in which he says, “The left-wing lunatics are trying very hard to bring back COVID lockdowns and mandates with all of their sudden fearmongering about the new variants that are coming.
“But to every COVID tyrant who wants to take away our freedom, hear these words: We will not comply, so don’t even think about it. We will not shut down our schools. We will not accept your lockdowns. We will not abide by your mask mandates, and we will not tolerate your vaccine mandates.”
I guess that he forgot that he was the first to impose mandates that shut the economy down, issued mask mandates and closed the schools. Remember flattening the curve? Remember 15 days to stop the spread? That was Trump. Remember Operation Warp Speed and the rush to produce mRNA experimental vaccines that indemnified Big Pharma? That was Trump.
I don’t blame Trump for his initial response with all the fear-mongering from Fauci, the CDC and all the models predicting the end of the world. But Fauci and the CDC were lying and the models were bogus. I do blame Trump for shutting down small businesses while allowing the giants to remain open leading to thousands of small business failures. I do blame Trump for not pivoting when the evidence came in showing the folly of masks and vaccines for less vulnerable groups. Masking and vaccinating children are akin to child abuse. Those who are most vulnerable should be protected and the rest of us left alone. For the vast majority of us, COVID is a bad cold or the flu and we don’t shut down and mask for either even though 50,000 die from the flu yearly.
The vaccines have come with serious adverse effects. I have two otherwise healthy friends who almost died from the Moderna vaccine. There were also adverse reactions to the Pfizer/AstraZeneca vaccine with myocarditis and pericarditis risks. It just stands to reason that if Big Pharma is indemnified then they would be less careful in the production of the drug.
Biden is so bad that he has made Trump look good. We tend to forget Trump’s inability to govern and his disastrous cabinet appointments. He pledged to end the administrative state and reform the Civil Service. He did neither. Instead, he wasted his time on trying to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. That was a mistake. The two should have been separate. The first should be to repeal and then introduce an act to replace. The effort failed due to the one vote of John McCain who likely voted “no” simply because he hated Trump. Now Obamacare with all its warts is embedded and will never be repealed.
Trump also ranted and raved about NAFTA claiming that it was the worst trade deal ever. Studies have shown that those states most adversely affected by NAFTA actually had positive gains in employment post NAFTA. But facts don’t matter in politics. So Trump and his people worked for countless hours to replace NAFTA with USMCA – the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Rolls right off the tongue. Close scrutiny shows that there is not much difference in the two despite the rhetoric.
But Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices, made America energy independent and stemmed the flow of illegals crossing the southern border. He also reduced the regulatory burden on Americans. Those positives mean four more years of Trump will be better for the country than four more years of Biden who seems intent on destroying the economy.
