Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R-TX) is not only fine with Donald Trump killing people with coronavirus for the sake of his economy, Patrick is volunteering to be sacrificed. And he’s hinting that other seniors should volunteer, too.
Monday, we learned that Donald Trump wants more Americans to die from the coronavirus for the sake of his pocketbook. Like lemmings, Fox News is ready for us to go off the cliff.
The Washington Post reported:
President Trump’s private business has shut down six of its top seven revenue-producing clubs and hotels because of restrictions meant to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, potentially depriving Trump’s company of millions of dollars in revenue.
Those closures come as Trump is considering easing restrictions on movement sooner than federal public health experts recommend, in the name of reducing the virus’s economic damage.
…
Even the Trump properties that remain open have been sharply affected: In Chicago, New York and Washington, the restaurants have closed, cutting off a key source of revenue.
So what a coincidence that Trump wants Americans to go out and about more and ignore public health experts’ recommendations to the contrary.
Despite the egg on Fox’s face for downplaying the coronavirus pandemic before reversing course, the network seems to have no problem shifting to a “maybe you should die” posture now. But Patrick took that to a whole new level Monday night. He all but called on seniors to cull the herd for the sake of the (Trump) economy.
You really have to read the complete exchange to get the insane audacity and ultimate stupidity of Patrick’s suggestion:
PATRICK: Tucker, no one reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren, and if that’s the exchange, I’m all in, and that doesn’t make me noble or brave or anything like that.
I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country like me, I have six grandchildren, that what we all care about and what we love more than anything are those children, and I want to live smart and see through this, but I don’t want the whole country to be sacrificed, and that’s what I see.
I’ve talked to hundreds of people, Tucker, and just in the last week. And making calls all the time. And everyone says pretty much the same thing - that we can’t lose our whole country. We’re having an economic collapse. I’m also a small businessman. I understand it and I talk with businesspeople all the time, Tucker, and I’m so – I’m just - my heart is lifted by what I heard the president say, because we can do more than one thing at a time. We can do two things, so my message is that let’s get back to work, let’s get back to living, let’s be smart about it, and those of us who are seventy plus, we’ll take care of ourselves, but don’t sacrifice the country. Don’t do that. Don’t ruin this great American dream.
Carlson seemed all in.
CARLSON: So you’re basically saying that this disease could take your life but that’s not the scariest thing to you. There’s something that would be worse than dying.
PATRICK: Yeah.
In a series of tweets, Chris Hayes explained why Patrick’s and Trump’s idea will almost certainly NOT save our economy or our country.
By the way, Patrick was hospitalized in the 1980s after a suicide attempt.
You can watch the current madness below, via Media Matters’ Andrew Laurence.
(H/T reader John McKee)
Tx Lt Gov Dan Patrick says grandparents would be willing to die to save the economy for their grandchildren pic.twitter.com/wC3Ngvtsbj
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) March 24, 2020
So even if immoral MAGAts like Trump and Patrick think profits are more important than human life in the short-term, they may actually create a brutal monster that will slaughter Americans in huge numbers for the long-term.
This is indeed a war, but the fodder are the elderly and vulnerable.
Who says these people don’t believe in natural selection?
May I move that Lt. Gov. Patrick lead by example and off himself and thereby eliminate all risk of having to be hospitalised should he catch Covid-19?
Listening to Trump – always an extremely dangerous and unpredictable exercise in frustration – it appears, at best, he will extend his 15 day wishy-washy measures maybe an additional week. So, it seems to me the best that be expected is America depending on the patchwork quilt of measures the nation’s governors have taken. Of course s—thead political MAGAts like Lt Gov Patrick are the weak link in this approach.
The actual underlying message is that the Pence White House and its sycophants are panicked that the economy is suffering. And the economy is suffering because the Pence White House completely mismanaged a pandemic situation from the word go – bungling something that the Obama White House and even W were able to handle without a nationwide shutdown and panic runs on supermarkets. So the solution from the Pence White House and the Right Wing hardliners is to endanger tens of millions of Americans – something that would result in a spike in new cases and deaths and then tank the economy worse than where it’s at right now.
I’m used to angry Right Wingers being short-sighted -vis a vis their approach to the environment and to the realities of increasing ethnicity change – but this is an unbelievably bad idea.
If Fox News gets its way on this, we will see that spike in virus infections and in deaths (both from the virus and from others who cannot get medical attention due to the spike in the virus cases), and Fox News will go from having indirectly contributed to a deadly situation to having DIRECTLY CAUSED IT.
Its so ironic. I’ll have to ask her now which country she thinks really puts the economy above its citizen’s lives.