Sen. John Cornyn is taking it upon himself to single-handedly shift blame for the US death toll from COVID-19 away from Donald Trump and onto…China. Cornyn’s shameless sycophancy will get people killed. It will also likely raise millions of dollars for John Cornyn.
Regardless of the source of the virus, or whatever missteps China made in slowing its spread, Cornyn’s “blame China” reelection strategy makes absolutely no sense, except as propaganda. Every other country, with access to the same set of facts about the virus, has handled it better than the US has. With 88,000 deaths in the US—and counting—compared to 4,000 in much-larger China, there is no way to spin such a catastrophic failure of government.
Taking China out of the equation—they may very well have underreported their statistics—the US has 272 deaths per million. Germany? 96. South Korea? Five.
These numbers are shameful and they are not getting better. The reason they are not getting better has nothing to do with China, and everything to do with the uncaring, incompetent response of Donald J. Trump and his coterie of enablers like John Cornyn. In his desperation to retain power, Cornyn is trying to agitate a diminishing base of low-information voters. Let’s push back on this cynical strategy. Let Cornyn know he has blood on his hands. And just as important, let’s vote him the hell out of office.