Journalists and activists use 9/11 as an excuse to hit Trump over the coronavirus

It is going to be a long day.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said, “So it’s 9/11. Hard to remember now how large the terrorist attack loomed in our national psyche; after all, in death toll Covid-19 is already the equivalent of 60 9/11s.”

He added, “Almost two decades on, it’s now clear that the real threat to America comes not from foreign terrorists but from home-grown white supremacists. But you know what? That was true even in 2001.”

Former Director of the Office of Government Ethics Walter Shaub adds elsewhere, “9/11 is a day of somber reflection. Will we feel the same as we recall Trump killing most of the 200,000 who perished in 2020? He hoped downplaying COVID’s threat would help him politically and didn’t care who his lies killed. Trump killed far more Americans than Osama bin Laden.”

“The pandemic is now every week taking twice as many American lives as were lost on 9/11,” said CNN White House correspondent John Harwood.

The GOP once allowed this guy to moderate a Republican primary debate.

“We’ve lost more Americans to COVID-19 this week than we lost on 9/11,” said Democratic Illinois Rep. Sean Casten.

There is more.

“9/11 fostered drastic changes to daily life and the world more generally (many of them devastating),” said Business Insider’s John Haltiwanger. “The US established a new federal agency and expanded its security apparatus in major ways. Imagine if the country’s response to COVID-19 mirrored even a fraction of that effort.”

Kellyanne Conway’s husband went on a tear Friday, breaking his self-imposed Twitter ban to accuse President Trump of causing 66 9/11s.

“On [Trump’s] watch, 196,345 Americans have died from #COVID19 (21.5% of all deaths worldwide),” George Conway tweeted. “That’s almost 66 times the number of innocent dead from the September 11 attack, which killed 2,977 people in 2001.”

He added elsewhere, “On this 9/11, the greatest threat to the safety and security of Americans is the President of the United States.”

“A horrifying statistic on an already sad day of remembrance: 64 times more Americans have died from COVID-19 so far this year (191,803) than the number of people who died in the 9/11 attacks (2,977),” said HuffPost senior politics reporter Jennifer Bendery. “33,019 people in NY have died from COVID-19.”

To show she really cares about the victims, her note includes an emoji of a broken heart.

There is much more where this comes from, but you get the picture.

It is as everyone is taking their cues from CNN’s Brian Stelter, who wrote in his newsletter on Wednesday, “What if this 9/11-level failure had been treated like a 9/11-level failure last spring? Would our children be back in school? Would some of our loved ones still be alive?”

“What if” indeed.

If the U.S. response to the pandemic was anything like its response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, federal agents would be spying now on suspected coronavirus carriers, monitoring their moves and communications. If the U.S. response to the pandemic was anything like its response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, there would be an offshore prison of dubious moral and legal standing where infectious patients would be held indefinitely. If the U.S. response to the pandemic was anything like its response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an entire federal agency would be created to impose arbitrary and capricious rules on all international and intercontinental air travel. If the U.S. response to the pandemic was anything like its response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, we would be at war right now with the country responsible for the virus. Wuhan would be a parking lot right now.

I had not taken Stelter and company for pro-war hawks, but I suppose everyone is full of surprises.

God, it is going to be a long day.