Democrats are fond of ascribing deaths from COVID-19 to President Trump instead of the virus itself.
During Monday’s Democratic National Convention, a Biden supporter named Kristin Urquiza discussed her Trump-supporting father, who died from the virus after going to karaoke. She said her father was healthy when he died. “His only preexisting condition was trusting Donald Trump,” she said.
Arguments that Trump is directly responsible for deaths from COVID-19 are partisan and cruel. They are also not altogether uncommon.
In a recent congressional hearing, Rep. Maxine Waters expressed utter certainty that the late Herman Cain had caught the coronavirus from Trump’s Tulsa rally, even though she has no idea where Cain contracted the virus, nor does anyone close to Cain, including his website’s editor.
“I’m told that he was in good health and that he, of course, contacted [sic] the virus as a result of his attendance without a mask there,” Waters said. “So my condolences to his family.” The hint of disingenuousness was more than slight.
Where Trump has tried to wish the virus away, he has come back strongly with support for mask-wearing and following state health rules. He has even offered extremely grave predictions about the state of the pandemic as a form of overcorrection.
In any case, he certainly wasn’t in charge of determining where infected nursing home patients were to go. Those on-the-ground decisions were not the president’s. Where he spoke about the deleterious effects of the virus mainly targeting older people, he was following exactly what public health officials have said for months. Where he argued for schools to reopen, he was quoting people such as Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield.
It’s certainly tragic that Urquiza’s father died from COVID-19, but ascribing responsibility to Trump where he had none is grossly unfair. If these notions that Trump is the source of death are true, then there is absolutely no hope. Social distancing won’t be able to protect anyone from death. Wearing a mask certainly can’t do that either.
CORRECTION: An earlier version misquoted Urquiza as saying her father’s only preexisting condition was “supporting” Trump. Her quote used the word “trusting.”
