A filmmaker has unveiled a coronavirus death toll tracker in Times Square dubbed the “Trump Death Clock.”
Eugene Jarecki, of documentary Freakonomics fame, installed the digital billboard last week in New York City and said it’s intended to show that U.S. coronavirus deaths are “due to POTUS’s inaction.”
“This suffering cannot be forgotten. As of today, tens of thousands of Americans have lost their lives as a consequence of the administration’s failure to act sooner, so it’s no wonder the president excoriates reporters who ask him why he waited so long to implement the guidelines. Trump’s fallback when he is under scrutiny is to deflect, attack, and distract. But will this work when his decisions have led to a loss of American lives? How will the President be held responsible?” Jarecki wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post last week.
The goal is to let numbers speak for themselves. They cut through the noise and circus of propaganda in the news cycles… What the numbers do to him [POTUS] is they demand accountability. In a pandemic every second counts. –@EugeneJarecki https://t.co/wNzcxf0Wce #TrumpDeathClock
— TrumpDeathClock (@TrumpDeathClock) May 13, 2020
“Just as the names of fallen soldiers are etched on memorials to remind us of the cost of war, quantifying the lives lost to the president’s delayed coronavirus response would serve a vital public function,” he added.
In addition to Freakonomics, Jarecki has worked on other political films, including 2011’s Reagan, which compared former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.
“The most important comparison between Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan is that each man is a highly intelligent, highly charismatic figure who became president at a time when the country was facing great challenges,” he said at the time. “What the country needed most in Ronald Reagan’s time was a true friend who would encourage us to look inward at ourselves and understand that to solve the problems of our time would take great sacrifice and significant change in the way we live, and there would come greatness, but it would only come through serious struggle.”
As of Thursday morning, the United States had reported nearly 1.4 million COVID-19 virus cases and more than 84,000 related deaths.
