DEBRA J. SAUNDERS: Blaming Trump, but giving Democrats a pass on COVID

WASHINGTON

At the Democratic National Convention, Kristin Urquiza essentially accused President Donald Trump of killing her father, Mark, who died of coronavirus after he went to a karaoke bar with friends.

“My dad was a healthy 65-year-old. His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump — and for that he paid with his life,” she said.

Urquiza told fellow Democrats that one of the last things her father told him was “that he felt betrayed by the likes of Donald Trump” — which is sad.

Also at the DNC, former President Barack Obama tossed out the horrible death toll from the pandemic — more than 170,000 Americans — and job losses that he laid at Trump’s feet.

It shows how partisan organizers are that they staged Urquiza’s and Obama’s decision to blame Trump for coronavirus deaths and nonetheless booked New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who told the confab, “For all the pain and all the tears, our way worked. And it was beautiful.”

Beautiful. The COVID-19 death toll for New York is more than 32,451, according to The New York Times.

On Twitter, outraged family members of the 6,600 or so seniors who died in New York nursing homes were especially incensed. On March 25, in a bid to free up hospital beds, Cuomo issued an order forcing nursing homes to accept patients who may be infected. Cuomo later withdrew the order.

Still, no Democrats blamed Cuomo for the casualties in the true blue Empire State.

The blame lies with Trump, they argued, because he didn’t take the virus seriously when it hit the United States. When he should have ordered Americans to stay home, instead he urged people to go about their business. He cared more about the economy than American lives, critics claimed.

On March 7, Trump said of the virus, “We closed it down. We stopped it.” And: “We’re doing very well and we’ve done a fantastic job.”

Which sounds pretty bad if you don’t know that on March 8 Cuomo told reporters, “There is more fear, more anxiety, than the facts would justify. This is not the Ebola virus, this is not the SARS virus, this is a virus that we have a lot of information on.”

In her acceptance speech, Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris faulted Trump for turning “tragedies into political weapons” — even as she and fellow Democrats did just that.

The left wants to blame Trump so much that some are willing to put the onus on infected family members who got sick, they claim, because they trusted Trump.

In April, the Times ran a story about bar owner and Trump supporter Joe Joyce, who died of coronavirus after taking a cruise to Spain. “If Trump had gone on TV with a mask on and said, ‘Hey this is serious,’ I don’t think he would have gone,” Joe Joyce’s daughter told the paper in a story that chronicled the Trump voter’s gullibility thanks to a reporter’s credulity. As the saying goes, some stories are too good to check.

In the National Review, senior writer Dan McLaughlin tore apart the Times story. In a piece headlined, “Stop Dancing on the Graves of Trump Supporters Who Die of the Virus,” McLaughlin noted that Joyce and his wife left for the cruise on March 1. That’s the day New York saw its first known coronavirus death.

If only Trump had worn a mask? The day before the Joyces boarded ship, Surgeon General Jerome Adams tweeted, “Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS! They are not effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus,” but are needed by health care providers.

In an obituary she wrote about her father’s death, Urquiza wrote, “His death is due to the carelessness of the politicians who continue to jeopardize the health of brown bodies through a clear lack of leadership, refusal to acknowledge the severity of this crisis and inability and unwillingness to give clear and decisive direction on how to minimize risk.”

The left likes to say that the right should listen to the science. But when Trump voters get COVID, liberals blame their politics.

Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter.