Noted economist Paul Krugman used an analogy about the doomed Titanic cruise liner to sum up President Donald Trump ’s disastrous handling of the coronavirus crisis.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling more and more as if we’re all trapped on the Titanic — except that this time around the captain is a madman who insists on steering straight for the iceberg. And his crew is too cowardly to contradict him, let alone mutiny to save the passengers,” Krugman began his column for The New York Times published Thursday.
Krugman noted in the editorial headlined “The Deadly Delusions of Mad King Donald ” how multiple states are now experiencing dangerous spikes in new infections following the easing of stay-at-home orders that had been aimed at mitigating the spread of COVID-19.
“A normal president and a normal political party would be horrified by this turn of events,” he wrote. “They would realize that they made a bad call and that it was time for a major course correction; they would start taking warnings from health experts seriously.”
But Trump and his allies don’t care how many Americans die “as long as the politics work in their favor,” Krugman argued.
The economist, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2008, concluded with a dire warning, saying “a lot more Americans are going to die” and that if presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden becomes president, then “he, like Obama 12 years ago, is going to take the helm of a nation in a deep crisis.”
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