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Second Trump Pandemic [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-26
As the Trump administration cuts off funding to USAID, the CDC, and to State Public Health Departments, one can reasonably predict what will happen next. There will be a second epidemic that breaks out and spreads to become a pandemic. We can also predict that the Trump administration will seek to blame others and otherwise lie about what is necessary to defeat it.
This will, of course, lead to a second recession. Again, the Trump administration will seek to blame others and lie about any measures that might make Trump less popular.
The Trump administration will then work to convince the U.S. that there is massive election fraud, that it needs to root out. It is claiming a tremendous popular mandate should allow it to set in motion sweeping changes to curb non-existent voter fraud, all with the obvious goal of reducing voting among key Democratic voting blocs. Facts not-in-evidence will not divert this campaign.
The Trump administration will then simply roll out its public relations campaign on Fox, other Conservative sites and now-free from regulation social media giants, such as X.
Wait! What? This is already happening? How can that be if half the country still seems enamored of the current president?
It can be because we let it be. We talk mostly amongst ourselves. With rare exceptions we do not even penetrate into the right wing media, much less talk to our alienated neighbors. Thus, the country remains largely split into two roughly equal ideological bubbles. The problem is that the right wing bubble has more resources and also some built-in advantages such as the electoral college.
So, how to we fix this? We need to adopt the most effective of the MAGA tactics. We need to repeat controversial points until they are simply accepted as fact. We also need a strategy to counter-act the MAGA propensity to lie and lie repeatedly. But, we do not need to become liars ourself.
What we do need to do is call out lies as lies. We need our leaders to do this. We need reporters to help with this. Mostly, we need to do it ourselves, and do it as publicly as possible.
Thus we need to repeat the use of a few simple works, “2nd”, “Next”, “Untrue”, “Hypocrisy”, and “Lie”. We need to start this now. We may even need to start it prematurely, at least in a few, obvious cases.
Let’s start with the coming recession. James Carville, for all his flaws, nailed this one. It is the economy, stupid, that moves most folks to change their course of action.
The Second Trump Recession has, obviously, already begun. Let’s start calling it by name. By the time it has directly hit a significant part of the population, including some Magacolytes, it will seem like a familiar theme. They will already know who to blame. Then, it will be much easier to talk to them.
How about the coming pandemic. This may take a little longer, but it is all but inevitable. The measles outbreak in the U.S. may well be the first step. Alternatively, it might be a variant of the bird flu. Or, there may be an overseas outbreak of some familiar or not-so-familiar disease. Without adequate public health services, a containable outbreak will break containment.
We do not have to wait for this to become a pandemic. We can start using our language now. “Do you see the current measle outbreak as the start of the Second Trump Pandemic?” When the inevitable argument is made, “That all started in China.” One can say, “Yes, but China contained it. The U.S., under the Trump administration, did not.
It was the U.S. that had the largest impact from the pandemic, despite having the most resources to contain it. China had less than 90 deaths per million, while the U.S. had over 3,300 per million. Further, it seems that under the second Trump administration prevention of U.S. and world pandemics has been all but abandoned . Thus, the question. “So, how is the administration preparing for this Second Trump pandemic?”
Now, there will be many instances over the next year or two when it becomes obvious that the Trump administration has either caused or failed to plan for almost-inevitable disasters.
Climate related storm damage? Check.
Family disasters related to the language of hate coming from this administration? Check.
Aircraft disasters after air traffic controllers are released? Check.
Layoffs of essential personel leading to screw-ups? (How about this latest national security screw-up?) Check.
Lying about the latests national security screw-up? Check.
Saying that the lies about the leaked Warplans are not important even though they previously resulted in calls for impeachment of Hillary Clinton? Hypocrisy, maybe? Check.
The bottom line here is that it does not take a genius to predict things that will fail under the Trump administration. It takes even less skill to predict the reaction of the administration when things fail. We simply need to call them out as sequential and predictable. Then, we need to keep calling them out as they occur.
2nd, Next, Hypocrisy, Lies.
It turns out, it is not the economy, stupid. It is the repetition. Most folks rarely tune into news, even right wing news. Most folks only catch news that goes viral. We need to make our version of the news go viral.
We do not reach new audiences unless we keep repeating the same message. It likely will be that the economy turns out to be the biggest issue yet again. That said, it won’t work to our advantage unless we repeat over and over again that this is not Trump’s first recession.
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