This year 2020 CNN had a special report on the conspiracy theories of the president of the United States. That might seem incredible, but it’s true. It was hosted by Fareed Zakaria who asked the main question right at the outset of the show, “Why does the President of the United States of America live in a world of dark sinister conspiracies?” As one pundit explained, “He gravitates instinctively to conspiratorial understandings of the world.” Or as another said, “the world actually makes sense if you look behind a curtain. There are dark malevolent forces behind the curtain.” As Zakaria said, “behind that curtain he sees political enemies”

Trump  said Joseph Biden and his son were corrupt. Hillary Clinton was a total liar. The election (that he won in 2016) was rigged. It was, as Jeffrey Goldberg said, “it’s all totally nuts. This is the first time I have the fear that a sitting president won’t leave if he loses a free and fair election.”

Fareed Zakaria said “the subject is urgent because the conspiracy theories circulating now are dangerous and the president of the United States is trafficking in them.”

It seems impossible; it is not. The President of the United States with the largest combined intelligence services in the world by a landslide, turns instead to the Internet and Fox News and other unreliable sources for information he relies on to govern the richest and most powerful country in the world. I think he does that because that dark world of conspiracy theories is the world in which he thrives. That is deeply troubling; that is scary.

Some think ‘the adults in the room’ will save us. Trump has already demonstrated over and over again, that the adults are either sycophants or weak or are not adults. We have no protection from anyone.

Some think the constitutional system of checks and balances will protect America and the world. Again, Trump has demonstrated over and over again that he can effortlessly fly over those checks and balances. We have no protection from them either. Even far away in Canada.

Frankly, we are naked to the world in front of the most dangerous man in the world. And that is no conspiracy theory.

As Zakaria said,

“When Donald Trump tells us elections are rigged, Obamagate is the biggest scandal in history, some know these ideas are wholly false, but others are less certain, especially when they hear a story full of details that seems to explain everything. Polls show that up to 50% of Americans have believed at least one of these conspiracy theories. This is a story about just how destructive they have become. Not just to the people they target, but also to the very foundations of our democracy.”

I have said this many times, but I will repeat it. I actually don’t care about Trump. He is hopeless. What I do care about, is that millions of Americans, and Canadians, support Trump. I keep asking how can that be?

I admit I have been on a bit of a harangue about truth. I have been picking on Donald Trump and that is too easy a target. It is like shooting fish in a barrel. But we must remember that he has millions of supporters. Perhaps 50 million Americans or more support him. Many think he will still be President of the United States after the next election. So Trump—no matter what any one says is important. He is important because so many people support him.

One of my friends told me he thinks Trump haters are lazy and ignorant. He said they find the most simplistic explanations that just don’t bear any resemblance to the Trump supporters he knows. He calls the Trump haters lazy and arrogant. I think he is right about them. Many of them are exactly that. No matter what Trump says or does they reject it. However exactly the same thing could be said about Trump supporters.

And he knows many. Well I know some Trump supporters too. Some of my American friends are Trump supporters. Some of my relatives are Trump supporters. Some of these are intelligent people. I respect them. But that does not get them off the hook.

The most recent revelation that Trump lied to the American people about the risk of the Covid-19 epidemic and endangered millions of lives is important. It is no secret that Trump has been a recurrent liar. Everyone knows that including his supporters. They discount the significance of those lies. They say they are an acceptable price to pay for all the good things Trump does such as appointing judges they like and cutting taxes to juice the economy. They have shrugged at the lies and overlook the shenanigans.

I want to remind my friends that lying has consequences. Sometimes it has very serious consequences. When voters don’t care about whether politicians tell the truth or not, that can cost lives. People die. In some cases many people die!

More than 190,000 Americans have died of Covid-19. That is more than 3 times the number of Americans that died during the Vietnam War and I was always appalled by the lying of the American political leaders that led Americans to support that war when they might not have done so had they known the truth.

I am not saying all Trump supporters belong to the “basket of deplorables.” Some of them are good people. In fact “there are good people on both sides” of the Trump debate. However, I submit Trump supporters are partly responsible for the unnecessary death of thousands of Americans who were misled about the dangers of Covid-19 by their president. I do call them misguided and I call them negligent.

That negligence has serious consequences. Allowing political leaders to get away with lies for the sake of getting judges you like or taxes cut is a very high price to pay. Such actions by Trump supporters has enabled and even encouraged the president to put Americans in danger. Thousands have died as a result. Millions have had their health compromised. These are serious harms.

This damage is not so remote that his actions can be excused. This is reasonably foreseeable harm as we lawyers say for which the person who caused the damage would be liable. It is Trump supporters more than Trump detractors who are lazy and arrogant. They are reckless with the lives of others.

As reporter Carl Bernstein said about Trump , “he has allowed the loss of life for his own narrow political purposes.” That is a pretty serious charge. Then Bernstein added, “and it is the most devastating cover-up in history.” And this is coming from the man who broke the Watergate story together with Bob Woodward. The two are back on the world stage again.

When truth dies the consequences can be serious. Lies have consequences.

Donald Trump has admitted on the Woodward tapes that he “played down” the dangers of Covid-19 when he already knew it was “deadly”. He lulled Americans into a false sense of security when he knew the dangers were real. As a result thousands of Americans did not take the precaution they could have taken had they been told the truth. I can’t think of a worse indictment for an American president. It is like the American presidents who lied to the public about the real reason for the War in Vietnam and the real state of that war while young men and women followed them and their generals into battle and died. I can think of only one word to describe such actions: egregious.

Trump did not deny lying. Instead he claimed he lied so Americans would not panic. While this is much less believable than the claim that he did this so Americans would not know how badly he had led the fight against the pandemic, he showed no hesitation at encouraging Americans to fear violence on the streets of America from the forces of antifa and Black Lives Matter. Trump’s entire political strategy is to spread fear.

As Jill Colvin of the Associated Press reported, this is what happened at a Michigan rally after the lies were revealed by Bob Woodward:

“This whack job that wrote the book,  Trump told the crowd. “They wanted me to come out and scream, ‘People are dying, we’re dying.’ No, no. We did it just the right way. We have to be calm. We don’t want to be crazed lunatics.”

Given what Trump has been doing at his rallies this claim loudly rings false. As Colvin reported,

“Trump seemed to have no issue leaning into fear at the rally. He lobbed several unsubstantiated accusations at Biden and Democrats, including charging they want to shut down auto plants — despite the Obama administration’s work to save the industry — and “delay” the production of a coronavirus vaccine. Biden, he claimed, would terminate travel bans Trump has implemented, overwhelming the state “with poorly vetted migrants from jihadist regions” and refugees “from terrorist hot spots around the world.”

Spreading fear is exactly what Trump always does. It is exactly what his entire campaign for re-election is based on—scaring Americans into voting for him. Again, as Colvin reported,

“He continued his racially charged appeal to suburban voters who turned to Democrats during the 2018 midterms, warning that under a Biden administration, “far left lunatics” would be placed in charge of the federal government and courts and American suburbs would be destroyed. “Does anyone want to have a member of antifa as a resident of your suburb? I don’t think so,” Trump declared, telling his supporters, “Your vote will save America.”

What could be scarier than that? So Trump has lied in a sad attempt to get around his earlier lies. Trump’s lies only get more outrageous. Now I am not trying to beat a dead horse. Everyone knows Trump lies. He does it all the time. He probably can’t tell the difference between lies and the truth anymore. There is nothing interesting about that. That is not the point.

The point is how will the American public respond? In particular how will his loyal supporters respond? Will they continue to acquiesce to the lies? Will they again shrug them off? If so, they are revealing a lot of truth about themselves.

What Trump did by his response to the Covid-19 pandemic and admitted “playing down” of the dangers undermined public confidence in the public health system. He issued directives and then ignored them. He even urged his followers to ignore his own directives. He mocked people who wore masks.

Dr. Craig Spencer was interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN about Trump’s lies about Covid. The physician was a Director of Global Health Emergency Medicine at Columbia University. In that position he became experienced at delivering bad news to sufferers of Covid and their loved ones. It’s not easy to tell people their loved ones are going to die. He was infuriated by what Trump did in misleading the public. As Spencer said, “the lies coming from the president are almost impossible to keep up with and correct.” This is what Dr. Spencer said about the Trump: “As a public health professional I am furious.”

On February 26, 2020 president Trump said his administration was doing a ‘terrific job” of handling the pandemic. I’m glad he thought so. No one else did. Dr. Sanjay Gupta a frequent CNN medical commentator had this to say about Trump: “He knew the truth and just didn’t do it.” Instead Trump made not wearing a mask a political statement. As Jamie Gangel said, “He was really paranoid about getting re-elected.” That is what was on his mind.

The terrible result of what Trump did, according to CNN’s Jim Accosta, was that “he lulled the country into a false sense of security.” As a result many Americans let their guard down. And they  paid a horrible price for doing that. It was a scandal. Trump got his supporters to sign waivers of claims they could have against Trump while he misled them about the truth of the dangers. Even on the White House grounds for his convention speech the fans, squeezed in tight without social distancing had to sign a waiver releasing Trump when Trump knew it was dangerous and did not tell them. How would you feel if one of your loved ones died as a result of being misled by the President of the United States. As he admitted on the Woodward tapes, he knew the virus was “deadly” and not only kept quiet about that, he actively encouraged people to attend rallies whether or not they socially distanced. I hope the lawyers of those people are urging their clients to sue Donald Trump for those waivers would likely not hold up in court. That could mean 190,000 lawsuits.

Yet Trump is running his current campaign on a platform of fear. He is deliberately trying to get people to be scared. As he said, “leadership is all about confidence.” Confidence in this context is another word for the flim flam game. Trump did not want to look weak in the campaign.

Carl Bernstein, the other Washington Post investigative reporter in the Watergate file, called the Woodward tapes the “ultimate smoking gun revealing probably the greatest felony of any president in history!” Just as with Eugene McCarthy, over confidence caught up with Trump. Hubris has been the Achilles heel of many a tyrant.

Abby Philip another CNN reporter said, “the president thinks he can create his own reality—the one he thinks fits his re-election chances or political prospects best.”

The important question is whether or not his supporters buy into that “reality.” That is what counts. It will say a lot about his supporters if they do.

While president Trump privately knew the Covid virus was “deadly,” he told journalist Bob Woodward that he was being a “cheerleader.” He wanted people to remain calm and confident in their leader. Publicly for months he minimized the danger, calling it a hoax or suggesting it was a Democratic Party ruse or fake news, putting millions of Americans at risk of serious harm.

Even though the knew the virus was “deadly” because it could spread through the air, he mocked people for wearing masks. No doubt many of his followers who take to heart everything he says, unknowingly put their lives in danger. He admitted privately it was “deadly” while saying publicly it was just another flu. As CNN analyst Jamie Gangel said, “it’s a striking contrast to what he was saying publicly.” After he continued to hold indoor public rallies with no social distancing he demonstrated clearly that he did not care about his supporters. He did not even warn those who supported him. Publicly at the time, he said, “I think the virus is going to be fine. We have it very much under control.”

In one interview with Woodward, on March 19, 2020, Trump acknowledged this: “Now it’s not just old people, Bob, but just today, and yesterday some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older, people, plenty of young people.” This was more than a month before he publicly declared that young people were almost immune. A bald faced lie that put young people at risk. How many parent believed Trump adn let their children walk into danger? Unfortunately millions of American youths believed their president and put their lives at risk without being aware of the real risk. If people are fully informed and then take chances they have assumed the risk and must be responsible for the consequences of their actions. That is very different than where political leaders withhold the truth for their own person political purposes. That is heinous.

In one interview with Trump, Woodward told Trump that he must have pivoted on the virus because what Trump said publicly was so different from what he was saying to him. Trump was too ignorant to take the hint. He responded this way: “To tell you the truth I always wanted to play it down. I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.”

First, as we all know, Trump is never shy about creating fear and panic. He does that all the time. He is a sower of panic. That is precisely his specific and clear strategy in the 2020 election campaign. He continuously tries to convince American that there is rioting in the streets and only he can deal with.

Secondly, this wasn’t about panic. Plenty of countries were told the truth by their political leaders, and did so seriously, and fared much better as a result than the United States did. The United States currently has about 190,000 deaths as a result of the pandemic, many other countries where political leaders told them the truth have done much better. As Jamie Gangel of CNN said, “Americans dealt with 9/11, they dealt with Pearl Harbour, they dealt with World War II. To say it was about preventing panic or calming people down is simply outrageous.” Naturally Trump lies to conceal his previous lies. No surprise there.

Another CNN commentator had another interesting comment about Trump’s claim that he was a cheerleader . “He hasn’t been a cheerleader; he’s been a misleader.”

He urged people to storm state legislatures when he knew how dangerous the virus had become.

As Anderson Cooper said, “True political leaders rise to the occasion. Americans can handle the truth.” They must be told the truth, that is the first lesson political leaders taken in managing a health crisis. Exactly that  advice was in the Obama playbook that his team assembled for dealing with pandemics that unfortunately Trump tossed in the waste basket as a unnecessary expense. The current big question is whether or not Trump and his administration is telling the whole truth now. I think we know the answer.