*(Top image: President Donald J. Trump listens to a reporter’s question at an update briefing on testing capacity Monday, May 11, 2020, in the Rose Garden of the White House. Credit: Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead/ Flickr)
As the pandemic COVID-19 started to sweep across the world in 2020, US President Donald Trump and his administration pointed fingers at China, accusing it of being responsible for the spread of the virus. Trump was audacious and racist enough to call COVID-19 a ‘Chinese virus’ and ignored criticism on how chauvinistic he was in his attitude.
His stigmatization of others has become a White House trend, and that includes the citizens of his own country. If anything, in this context, China shares one trait even with the citizens of America; they are both being scapegoated by Trump. Of course WHO and other organizations and countries have had their share of the Trump ‘scapegoat effect’.
As the Washington Post describes, Trump’s “penchant to blame others for his mistakes, his refusal to share the global stage politely with other actors, his indulgence of blind self-interest, and his utter contempt of science,” encapsulates the most questionable aspects of the president’s leadership style.
Trump’s latest low was about an attack on an elderly man who suffered a critical head injury that sent him to intensive care after he was pushed to the ground by police at a protest in Buffalo. Trump tweeted a right-wing conspiracy theory that the man, 75-year-old Martin Gugino, "could be an ANTIFA provocateur" who "was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment." The President continued by saying, "I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?"
A video, which anyone can watch with his own eyes, shows an officer pushing the clearly elderly Gugino, who falls to the ground where he lies, unmoving, as he bleeds from the head. The other officers simply step around him.
In a not so different context of branding others and trying to escape holding any responsibility, Trump accused China in March of standing behind the COVID-19 virus. At the time when all countries were trying to cooperate to face the pandemic, the US was shoving accusations here and there, kept deportation flights going when the world airports were more like ghost towns and even dared to hijack COVID-19 equipment aid flight which stirred harsh criticism.
While more than 200 million Americans stayed home according to directives, and flights were nearly empty if not grounded, US deportation flights were still taking place. According to a CNN report, organizations in Guatemala have expressed fear that coronavirus could be exported from the US to Central America and Guatemala.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement website reads that “Any detainee with a temperature of 100.4 degrees or higher will be immediately referred to a medical provider for further evaluation and observation.”
However, temperature screenings are not a sufficient indicator to whether or not a person carries the virus.
A Guatemalan man who was deported from the United States by the end of March had tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
According to Guatemalan health and migration officials, the man arrived in Guatemala on a deportation flight from Mesa, Arizona when he was asymptomatic at the time. But two days later, as officials said; he began presenting symptoms and subsequently tested positive for the virus.
Amid US administration overlooking, immigrant and human rights advocates have been warning for weeks that deportation flights from the United States, the country with the largest number of known coronavirus cases, could hasten the spread of the virus in other nations. On March 27, the United States had the highest number of known cases of coronavirus in the world with more than 82,000.
On April 30, Reuters reported that some two dozen migrants deported from the United States on a flight to Colombia in March have since tested positive for the coronavirus, two people familiar with the matter said, adding to worries US deportations could be spreading the disease.
One such flight also left from Alexandria, Louisiana, carrying more than 60 undocumented immigrants being returned to Haiti. In Guatemala, at least 103 migrants deported by the United States on a handful of flights in March and April have so far tested positive for coronavirus. The list goes on.
The flights do not only put people in deportation proceedings at risk, but also threaten to spread the coronavirus to countries ill-equipped to deal with the disease. US immigration officials stated that immigration enforcement must continue, pandemic or no. Trump has also threatened visa sanctions against countries that refuse to accept deported immigrants.
On 12 June, 2,045,633 cases were registered in the US, with predictions that US coronavirus deaths would reach 130,000. The United States could be approaching a worrying rise in coronavirus infections after widespread protests and business re-openings have created the opportunity of resurgence to the deadly virus, experts warn.
Also, the recent spike in cases in about a dozen states partially reflects increased testing. But many of those states are also seeing rising hospitalizations and some are beginning to run short on intensive care unit (ICU) beds.
Going back in time a bit, the Trump administration received its first formal notification of COVID on Jan.3. Trump was briefed by health officials about the coronavirus on January 18. US intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former US officials.
Donald Trump declared on February 25 “We’re very close to a vaccine.” Also, when asked about WHO data on the virus's death rate: "I think the 3.4% is really a false number... Personally, I think the number is way under 1%."
These are two simple examples of the striking false claims about the coronavirus pandemic he has uttered during the coronavirus pandemic which has accelerated the spread of the pandemic and took the lives of more than a hundred thousand so far in the United States and Two million across the world so far.
Similarly, Donald Trump’s administration has been accused of hijacking shipments of masks and additional crucial supplies meant for other countries, sarcastically including US allies, and strong-arming private firms to prioritize America over other parts of the world. This comes at a time when countries like China or even sanctioned Iran decided to send aid to other countries. China, for instance, sent a planeload of medical supplies, including masks and respirators, to Italy to help the European country deal with its growing coronavirus crisis around mid-March.
Countries around the world believed that no one can beat this virus unless everyone eliminates boundaries to resources and share their know-how and hard-earned lessons. Whereas Trump invoked the DPA to prevent exporting critical medical gear needed to combat the coronavirus outbreak.
In a statement in April, US-based manufacturer 3M expressed concern that the Trump administration had asked it to stop exporting certain respirators to Canada and Latin America and instead respond to growing demand in the United States.
“There are … significant humanitarian implications of ceasing respirator supplies to health care workers in Canada and Latin America, where we are a critical supplier of respirators,” the company said.
The source reported that multiple reports issued in April in which “officials accused Americans — including US government representatives — of essentially commandeering shipments of medical supplies meant for other countries, among them generally well-off US allies in Europe.”
In one incident, The Guardian reported that “American buyers managed to “wrest control” of a shipment of masks from China that was supposed to go to France by offering three times the selling price.”
In another, a German official accused the US of an “act of modern piracy” after a shipment of masks from China that was meant for Berlin were seized and diverted to the US while on its way in Thailand. Similar reports emerged from Brazil, where a high-ranking official said China had set aside his country’s orders for equipment after the US sent some 20 planes to pick up materials for itself.
Not only that, but also as Politico reported, in a bizarre reversal of the usual dynamic between the world’s leading power and those it typically helps, the Trump administration has even asked aid groups to share medical supplies and equipment with the US government.
On March 27, USAID issued an extraordinary “urgent request” asking aid groups around the world to see if they have personal protective gear and other medical supplies that could be given to the United States.
Some US officials claim it’s likely that the Trump administration will focus more on what it can do for other countries once it feels it has the situation in the United States under control. Conversely, the pandemic and its consequences did not prevent poorer countries from cooperating together as the US stands by watching and exploiting.
The story of Trump’s impotence and greed does not stop here. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned that the COVID-19 pandemic could almost double the number of people suffering acute hunger, pushing it to more than a quarter of a billion by the end of 2020. Trump’s reaction was everything but what he claims the US to be, a world leading power. He has sought major funding cuts to UN agencies. The United States is responsible for a significant portion of many UN agencies’ budgets. For many of them, especially those that depend on voluntary funding, cuts in U.S. contributions could be quite painful.
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