OPINION: Suppose you’re an idiot

Last Updated on Friday, 24 April 2020, 15:03 by Denis Chabrol

by Paul Sanders, New York, April 2020

Welcome to the new abnormal.

Disinfectants. Bleach. Blast the body with ultra violet rays too. That should do it. Covid-19 patients should be up and running with this proposed therapy. In no time.

In his outlanish display of quackery on Thursday, the Quack-in-Chief stunned medical professionals – as well as television viewers – by suggesting Coronavirus patients could somehow be treated with household disinfectants.

Interesting. What could go wrong? So, maybe, the cleaning lady or Joe,the plumber, can be a star in this public help emergency.

Talk about middle age sorcery. What took you so long Mr. President?

By now, it is clear that President Donald Trump is not up to the task of leading the American response to this deadly pandemic. He’s a masterful con man. If that was not obvious to you earlier, then you are a lost cause. Only an autopsy of this man’s beat up brain would reveal what’s really at play.

But something’s wrong here. And it’s not called thinking outside the box. Instead, this brainstorming goes by the appellation “very stable genius.”

This man has jokes. Sick jokes.

Even by Trump’s ridiculous standards, Trump’s Thursday briefing, parading itself as a well hidden campaign event, is a total absurdity in the promises he never intends to keep; it is one of the most corrosive elements of his handling of the Coronavirus crisis. His lies and bad counsel have cost thousands of lives; it will cost thousands more before this is over.

Here’s what is a frightening prospect. Somewhere in America, just as Trump’s huckster sales job of hydroxychloroquine led to his fans drinking a similarly labeled-tank cleaner with fatal results, someone – more than likely a tireless, shameless Trump defender, and stay-at-home protestor – is thinking about an off-label use of a household disinfectant because Donald Trump is smarter than those heretic scientists. Also, expect the loud, moronic screeching on Fox and Friends who are super-excited to defend Trump’s alchemy. It won’t be long before they join Trump in blaming and framing a conspiracy.

Yeah. It’s that bad. Trump’s war against the “invisible enemy” is a war against scientific method. His statement is so ludicrous, so potentially dangerous, that British manufacturer of Lysol and Dettol had to scramble to issue warnings and reminders that their products are not meant to be administered into the human body.

Because this “wartime president” doesn’t know much, doesn’t read know much, or learn much. He feels much, and talks much. He said “I’m not a doctor. But I’m a person with common sense.” Really?

Other manufacturers quickly followed suit in retaliation. Further backlash came from doctors who also rejected the president’s bizarre musings, urging people not to experiment with ingesting bleach.

In order words, Trump is a charlatan. His egregious thinking is not of a grown adult, one that received a formal education. It seems he’s quite happy in building his legacy of bat-feaces lunacy like that of the illiterate Saparmurat Niyazov who was once president of Turkmenistan.

And here’s the kicker. The man who stood there yesterday hyping unproven Covid-19 treatments is actually the president of the United States. And he has the control of America’s entire nuclear arsenal.

Sleep tight.