We’re Getting Closer: Perspective On Trump’s COVID-19 Death Count

Let history be our guide.

It’s worse than the infamous Bataan Death March, a Japanese war crime of World War II in which an estimated 22,000 POWs at least, were killed or died.

Much worse.

Worse than the total casualties of the Battle of Stones River during the Civil War, with 24,000 injuries, deaths, and POWs/MIAs.

Worse also than casualties in the Battle of Shiloh, also during the Civil War, with 24,000, where blood flowed like water.

Worse even than casualties in the Civil War’s Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in 1864, which involved 30,000 lives.

Photo of the Chickamauga Battlefield from the Mathew Brady Photographs series, The Battle of Chickamauga, September 19 – 20, 1863, National Achives; https://catalog.archives.gov/id/524418 Confederate General Braxton Bragg’s Army of the Tennessee defeated forces from the Union’s Army of the Cumberland under Major General William Rosecrans in the Battle of Chickamauga in Georgia on September 19-20, 1863. However, Rosecrans’ forces were able to slip away to Chattanooga, and later relieved by forces under Ulysses S. Grant.

Worse than the Battle of Chickamauga, with 34,000 casualties in the Civil War in 1863.

And even much worse than the Battle of Gettysburg, with 51,000 casualties in 3 days of fighting.

And the Iraq War, with only 4576 deaths is but a mere pittance.

And the War in Afghanistan, where 2216 lives were lost, is exceedingly eclipsed.

• FIVE major Civil War Battles
• A Notorious World War II war crime
• Two modern wars

ALL COMBINED, it’s only 191,792.

And Trump has beat ’em all.

That’s because he always does the most in everything he’s ever done – so he says.

196,103.

That’s the cumulative total number of COVID-19 related deaths in the United States, as reported by Johns Hopkins University, as of 1023, Wednesday, 16 September 2020 .

3000.

That’s the number of people who died in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center twin towers, and the Pentagon.

6436.76% more have died under Trump’s watch,
than under Bush’s.

And only 16,832 more to go before we eclipse the total deaths in World War I (116,516), Vietnam War (58,209), and Korean War (36,574) combined – 211,299.

Here’s another number:

197,544.

The TOTAL number of casualties – deaths, injuries, POWs, MIAs – from the Top Ten Major Civil War Battles of:

Gettyburg
Chickamauga
Spotsylvania Courthouse
Shiloh
Stones River
Antietam
First Battle of Bull Run
Second Battle of Bull Run
Fredricksburg
Cold Harbor

196,103 is today’s Trump Death Count – Wednesday, 16 September 2020,
as of the 1023 update.

Only 1441 to go.

The next macabre marker for the Trump virus is Civil War Battlefield Deaths – 204,100.

That’s just 7,997 away.

We’re getting closer.

“And – we’re – we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s — going to be just fine.”
––Trump to CNBC Squawk Box host Joe Kernan at World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 22

“We only have five people. Hopefully, everything’s going to be great. They have somewhat of a problem, but hopefully, it’s all going to be great. But we’re working with China, just so you know, and other countries very, very closely. So it doesn’t get out of hand. But it’s, you know, it’s something that we have to be very, very careful with, right? We have to be very careful.”
— Trump, at a Des Moines, Iowa campaign rally January 30

“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus. This is deadly stuff.”
– Trump to veteran reporter Bob Woodward in a February 7, 2020 phone call interview about the coronavirus

“Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. I hope that’s true. But we’re doing great in our country. China, I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s going to all work out fine.”
— Trump, at a campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, February 11

“I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”
– Trump in a March 19, 2020 phone interview with Bob Woodward about the coronavirus

“The virus has nothing to do with me. It’s not my fault.”
– Trump to Woodward on July 21, their final interview

Reporter Kristen Welker of NBC: “Thank you much, Mr. President. Dr. Fauci said earlier this week that the lag in testing was in fact, a failing. Do you take responsibility for that? And when can you guarantee that every single American who needs a test will be able to have a test – what’s the date of that?”

President Trump: “Yeah. No, I don’t take responsibility at all because we were given a… uh… a… set of circumstances, and we were… given rules, regulations, and specifications from… a different time; it wasn’t meant for this kind of… ah… an event… ah… with the numbers that we’re talking about. And what we’ve done is we designed it very quickly with the help of the people behind me, and we’re now in very, very strong shape. I think we’ll be announcing – as I said – Sunday night, and ah… this will start very quickly. And we’ll have… we’ll have the ability to do.. in the ah… millions… ah… over a very, very quick period of time. So no. And what we have done… and we are gonna’ be… leaving a very indelible print for the future, in case something like this happens again. But it was a… and that’s not the fault of anybody, and frankly… the whole system worked very well for smaller numbers, much smaller numbers, not these kind of numbers.”

President Trump Holds a News Conference, Streamed live on March 13, 2020, Unlisted (the White House has now hidden this link from searches – https://youtu.be/feycmqjsLNw; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feycmqjsLNw)

See also: https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2020/03/2020-time-capsule-3-i-dont-take-responsibility-at-all/608005/

Bob Woodward is a respected author renown for his work at the Washington Post during the Nixon administration which won a Pulitzer Prize, in exposing the Watergate crimes and resulting scandal that led to Nixon’s near-impeachment, and ultimate resignation, and for his reporting on the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, also with the Post, which won a Pulitzer.

Following criticism of his decision to delay publishing the news that the President had known all along that the coronavirus which causes COVID-19 disease was much more virulent, damaging, and easily transmitted.

Woodward spoke with Mary Louise Kelly host of NPR’s All Things Considered news program who asked him about the matter, and he said that in his February interview with Trump, he thought Trump was referring to the virus in China, and told her that, “I … believed he was talking about the virus in China, because he had talked to Chinese President Xi [Jinping] the night before.”

Woodward also said by March, he knew the coronavirus was an “American problem” as well, “And so I’m asking the question, what did the president know, when did he know it, and how did he know it? And I worked for 2 1/2 months to find out and it was finally in May when I discovered that there was this meeting, January 28, in the Oval Office.”

He added that, “I wish I knew what I learned in May earlier. Unfortunately, I did not. “I’ve done this almost for 50 years, and I think I have a public health responsibility, like any citizen does — or maybe a journalist has more of a responsibility. If at any point I had thought there’s something to tell the American people that they don’t know, I would do it.”

It was also in Woodward’s March 19 interview with Trump that the President said, “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Following up on his remark, Woodward said to NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly, that, “If there’s a tragedy in all of this – and I think there is – it’s that Trump, who said, ‘I wanted to play it down, because I didn’t want to create a panic.’ And my study of nine presidents — 20% of the presidents we’ve had, and the history before that — is when the country is told the truth, they don’t panic.”

Woodward recollected his conversation with Trup to Kelly, saying that, “I said [to Trump] … ‘This is a moment of crisis and necessity, you have a leadership responsibility … you’re gonna be judged by the virus.’ I was pushing him to deal with it, quite frankly … and at the end of the book, I say in totality: Trump is the wrong man for the job.”

Woodward also talked about Trump’s brinkmanship with North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un in 2017, and said,

“It reached the point … that then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis would go to the National Cathedral to pray and reflect on what his responsibility would be if there was some sort of nuclear exchange with North Korea. It got very dicey.”