1/10 Trump knowingly downplaying COVID shows not just his depravity -- gambling w/lives for the sake of image -- but also his utterly for shit instincts & understanding of economics. His fear wasn't public panic (which he stokes constantly) but spooking the markets (cont)...
2/10 He truly thought if he led w/happy talk, the virus, even if bad, wouldn't tank the economy. But one can only believe this if you don't understand how markets work. They respond to real conditions, like mass illness & the fear it engenders. Rosy talk can't "trump" that...
3/10 If COVID was always going to be terrible, it's not like the markets wouldn't notice as people dropped dead, others cut back on going out & spending money, states were forced to shut down, etc., just bc some bottom-feeder Wharton grad was promising happy days ahead...
4/10 But his narcissism, natch, led him to think that would actually be enough...to think that markets are nothing more than a pliable instrument easily molded by a good story, and that he, as a storyteller and salesman, could override the brutal logic of capitalism itself...
5/10 But what he forgot, and his fans have never been able to accept, is that he was always a shit businessman. Multiple bankruptcies, using lawyers to get out of trouble, failure after failure, even WITH the 400m+ in cash and assets from his dad over the years...
6/10 He doesn't understand the economy. The only thing he was ever good at was selling his name, his personal brand, his image. It was all smoke & mirrors. Everything else he's touched has gone to shit...casinos, his real estate deals, TrumpU, steaks...and now, America...
7/10 So not only is he a failure using the metrics that decent people care about -- like mass death, stoking racial hatred, honesty as opposed to corruption, etc -- but even on his own terms (the only ones he cares about, which are about money) he's a loser....
8/10 He could have been honest from the start, pushed for massive stimulus to save the economy from free fall, led the fight against the virus as a unifying cause for the country, and been re-elected easily. But who am I kidding? He couldn't do that, because he isn't a leader...
9/10 He's just that scared little boy whose father hated him, and who could never please that father, and who marinates in self-doubt as a result & papers over that self doubt w/ magical thinking & toxic positivity about his own abilities to make things real that aren't...
10/ And now the nation & world pays the price. He is a symbol of all that is wrong w/America: the style over substance, the packaging over the product, the elevation of bullshittery to a place of sacramental reverence. He and those who revere him are why we can't have nice things
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