Denying Reality Is Finally Biting Republicans in the Ass

Shealah Craighead/White House/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Politico reporter Dan Diamond on President Trump’s listless attitude toward coronavirus testing:

My understanding is he did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent weeks, and that’s partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear — the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential reelection this fall.

Republicans have made a habit of denying reality over the past couple of decades. Climate change doesn’t exist. Tax cuts pay for themselves. The Great Recession was all because of reckless government loans to black people. Hillary Clinton was responsible for Benghazi.

Trump, of course has taken this to new heights. His inauguration had the biggest crowds in history. Five million people voted illegally in 2016. Russia had nothing to do with election meddling. Wind turbines cause cancer. China pays for his tariffs. Etc.

You can get away with this for a while, especially if you have Fox News and talk radio to back you up. And the longer you get away with it, the more convinced you become that it will always work, that everything in politics is marketing. So eventually you go too far: you try to deny the reality of an epidemic that even your most fervent supporters know is real. You double down by quoting obviously bogus testing numbers. But unlike your previous delusions, this one has real consequences: since testing and tracing are the backbone of infectious disease control, a lack of testing makes the epidemic even worse.

The United States was never likely to control the coronavirus as well as places like China and Singapore, which tolerate centralized control in a way we just don’t. At the same time, we’re also richer than these countries and could afford to spend far more money on things like free testing, income assistance so sick people would stay home, and subsidized medical care so people would seek help in the first place. But that would have made the coronavirus pandemic more visible, not less, and that’s something neither Trump nor his conservative allies were willing to abide. They’re so used to denying reality and getting away with it that they just couldn’t believe they were finally faced with a situation where it might not work.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate