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Dear Editor:

There are still people out there who think President Trump didn’t do anything wrong responding to the coronavirus epidemic.

Here’s all you need to know to gauge the effectiveness of the Trump administration in handling the crisis. As I write this, the United States with 4% of the world’s population has 27% of the deaths. It has been estimated that 50% of the deceased would still be alive if Trump had acted two weeks earlier.

Recently, senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, designated by Trump to be his jack of all trades and master of none, did a victory lap in claiming 60,000 deaths shows the government did a fine job. Well, the estimated death toll has been doubled mainly because of a greater exposure to previously uninfected people following re-opening. Trump himself in his recent town hall interview raised the “goal” to 100,000-110,000 deaths. As long as the death toll doesn’t reach two million, he’ll pat himself on the back and call it a win.

One of the few good things to come out of the coronavirus disaster is that President Trump has demonstrated to the entire country his flaws that make him unfit to be president. They are in no particular order: narcissism, disdain for expertise, lack of knowledge, indifference to facts, compulsive lying, spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories, vindictiveness, and a need to politicize everything. All adding up to a general incompetence and a lack of leadership that a president is expected to exhibit.

However, the worst personality flaw exhibited by Trump during this crisis is his lack of empathy for the victims of the coronavirus. According to The Washington Post, at the daily coronavirus briefings between April 6 and April 24, Trump spent a total of more than 13 hours speaking. Of that total he spent two hours on attacks and 45 minutes praising himself and his administration. However, in only eight of the briefings, totaling four and a half minutes mostly in prepared statements, did he express condolences for the victims.

Joseph Stalin, the former Soviet Premier, once said, “A single man’s death is a tragedy. A million deaths are a statistic.”

Trump doesn’t care about people getting sick and dying. He only cares about himself and his re-election campaign. He is more than willing to sacrifice as many Americans as necessary in an attempt to restart the economy in time for the election. Trump has everyone who works in the White House tested for coronavirus everyday but he isn’t interested in the rest of America getting tested because he’s trying to hide the fact that the epidemic is getting worse in the U.S. not better like he claims. His order forcing meat processing plants to stay open, despite virus outbreaks there, forces employees to decide whether to risk infection and death or losing their job.

Of course, the people in those plants are low income or minorities whom I imagine Trump is willing to write off as both expendable and easily replaced.

The ironic thing about Trump’s cheerleading to get states to ease up on the lockdowns will lead to many more deaths, mainly in those areas which voted for him in 2016. The domestic terrorists who carried assault rifles to occupy public buildings to intimidate governors will soon come down with the virus. Those “covidiots” will spread the virus to other Trump supporters thus reducing the number of potential Trump voters.

James Peca

Farmville