Maddening

Congress is currently negotiating between houses and parties about legislation providing for another round of coronavirus relief. But as the Washington Post reported yesterday (link here), Donald Trump and his administration are trying to block any additional funds for virus testing, infection tracing, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The White House is claiming additional testing money is not needed because what was allocated in the last bill has yet to be spent. But the whole reason for that is Trump's administration is blocking spending of those funds.

This is all tied to Trump's maddeningly ignorant belief that more testing is wrong because higher infection numbers look bad for him. He conveniently ignores the fact that untested people can still infect and kill family and friends and strangers alike.

Potentially his root reasoning here is that as long as he can keep the numbers down before election day, then that's good. So suppress testing now, he's thinking, even if it makes the virus spread much more widely now because otherwise it looks worse for him.

Which is just another way of saying the one and only thing he thinks about is his reelection. Fuck people who get sick and die. He doesn't care about you. Fuck everybody who gets sick, doesn't die, but is permanently weakened because of having contracted the disease. He doesn't care about you, either.

This is the danger of an extreme narcissist in the Oval Office. "What's in it for me" is the sole parameter on his mind when he makes decisions like this.

It's more painfully obvious with every passing day that he must be soundly defeated on November third.