If it turned out that all the news was false and all of Covid19 was an absolute hoax (and mind you, I'm not saying that I believe this to be the case in the slightest), that wouldn't change the damage that the shutdown has done to the economy.
Trump is pushing for more stimulus payments because people are broke, not because they're sick. Whether or not Covid19 is as much of a health crisis as they say is irrelevant to the reality of peoples' finances, and Trump's opinions on the matter don't dictate whether or not state governers are going to shut down again/extend ongoing shutdown rules. Don't confuse the concept of "related" with the concept of "directly causal." It'll **** your perceptions all up.
Because they are broke huh? So Trump arbitrarily decides people need money huh? Not because of the virus?
The virus didn't take everybody's money away, genius. The shutdown did. Viruses, in the biological sense of the word, don't have the capacity to raid your bank account or lift your wallet.
Sure, the governers shut down because of the virus, but since Trump isn't the one deciding on whether or not to shut down, the fact that he doesn't consider the virus to be the threat that the MSM does isn't in any sort of confliction with his recognition that the economy is in the shitter.
Stop being willfully dense about this, I know you're not as dumb as you're playing.
Lol so let’s pretend we never did a shut down and every thing was just normal from the beginning. Just how much bigger do you think the death toll would be? I mean right now it is 130k. If we did NOTHING to slow the spread. How much higher would it be?
WTF does that have to do with what we're talking about? Our argument wasn't about whether it was right or wrong to shut down the economy, and at no point in anything I've posted in this thread did I venture an opinion on that matter. I said that the economy is where it is regardless of whether Trump acknowledges the threat of the virus. Even if he believed that Covid19 didn't exist and the whole thing was a lie cooked up by China and the Dems, it wouldn't force him to believe that the shutdowns had never happened and that everybody was still going to work like normal.
Honestly the proposition that it's somehow impossible to simultaneously believe that the threat that the virus poses to our health is greatly exaggerated, AND that our reaction to it has hurt the economy, is so insanely God damn ridiculous that I'm having trouble believing that you actually believe it. These two thoughts aren't even REMOTELY contradictory.
The point I am obviously making is that the economy and the virus are completely intertwined issues. Therefore Trump wanting new stimulus checks is hypocritical if he wants to pretend the virus isn't a big deal. If the economy was never shut down, we'd still be in the shitter because many more people would be currently dead than 135k.
Fair enough that this is your point, but it's still a bullshit point. The fact that the governers have shut down for long enough for the economy to be where it is isn't a factual indicator of the virus's potency, it's only an indicator of those governers' perception of the virus's potency. It doesn't make Trump a hypocrite to believe that the governers overreacted to the virus and fucked up the economy more than they had to. It might make him wrong, but there's nothing self-contradictory about that belief. Nothing about what you've said here actually backs the premise of your OP.
Okay it is absolutely ridiculous to suggest the shutdowns didn't prevent infections to some degree. ******* of course they did. Minimizing social contact is how you prevent any ******* virus from spreading. It doesn't matter if Trump always opposed the shutdown. We'd be fucked either way. The option we went with, however, saved lives. You pretending otherwise is stupid. And again, if we did no shut down at all, WAY more people would be dead right now which would inevitably **** up the economy in its own way. Trump being too stupid to see that doesn't excuse him.
I didn't suggest that. No matter how tempting it is to kick down that strawman, it's not the argument I've been making. I'm going to try this one more ******* time for you. Please, attempt to keep in mind that, no matter how convinced you are of the absolute necessity of the lockdowns, there are other people who don't believe that. Any of this making sense for you, and indeed your very ability to understand where other people are coming from in general, is incumbent upon you being able to understand that your beliefs, whether right or wrong, are not everybody else's beliefs.
Trump might be wrong to suggest that the shutdowns were unwarranted. I understand how vehemently you feel that he is. However, the fact that he believes this to be the case does not contradict with the idea that he understands that the shutdowns did, in fact, happen, which means that attempting to address the economic effects of said shutdowns does not make him a hypocrite. No matter how many people you believe would have died without the shutdowns, pointing out those numbers in NO WAY proves or even implies that Donald Trump believes this as well. Whether or not he is a hypocrite hinges on whether or not HE BELIEVES that the shutdowns were necessary, not whether or not they were actually necessary.
If you're going to insist on repeating these numbers and reiterating your reasons for supporting the shutdown as though any of that somehow backs your hypocrisy claim, or if you're going to move the goalposts and try to make our argument about something other than that, you might as well save that shit.
Lol dude you are really splitting hairs on this shit. Youre arguing over such a stupid minor point which is Trump and his reasoning for the checks as a result of the shutdown itself. But from my perspective, Trump trying to separate these two issues regardless is ******* stupid. Even if Trump’s intention is doing this for the sake of the economy and NOT because of the virus as you claim, it is still ******* stupid. It’s ******* stupid to even hammer that point home.
I'm arguing over the point you made in your OP. If it's a minor, hair splitting point, why was it literally the focus of your initial statement?
My original point is that the economy and the virus are intertwined regardless of what justification Trump gives for this shit. Either way, you seem so convinced over his mindset. You’re really just speculating on this thought process as to WHY he wanted these stimulus checks but you’re convinced of it.
That was demonstrably not your original point. That point appears NOWHERE in your OP. First you say:
I mean which is it? Is it a crisis? Trump definitely doesn’t act like it. He is only pushing for more checks because he desperately wants voters to like him. It’s pretty pathetic.
Asking that question in no way presents the idea that the economy is directly intertwined with the virus. All it does is explore Trump's motives for this claimed disparity in his thinking. After that, you say:
Republicans generally complain about this kind of socialism yet they won’t with these stimulus checks for two reasons:
1) Trump wants it so therefore it’s a great idea.
2) Welfare like this is obviously excused by republicans because, well, they are people who are getting it lol. It’s not like any republican will say no to their check. They only complain when other people get free monies. They will gladly accept their check yet continue the double speak of COVID being no biggie.
Once again, none of this so much as mentions the relationship of the virus to the economy. All any of this does is cynically explore why Republicans agree with the stimulus proposal. After that, you post your article, and that's it. So you see, NOWHERE in your OP did you actually make any point, other than that Trump is a hypocrite, that he does it because he wants his voters to like him, and that Republicans are hypocrites because they don't like welfare or socialism until they're the ones benefitting from it.
And again, the very title of your thread is, "
How do republicans make sense of Trump wanting to push for another round of stimulus payments yet pretends COVID isn’t a crisis?"
So no, I'm sorry, you didn't start out making a noble point about how our economic troubles are an inevitable result of a shutdown that is absolutely necessary and in no way overblown, and I didn't come in here and turn your thread petty to derail it. What actually happened is that you started out making a petty argument, got tired of trying to defend it, and opted for some projection and accusation in stead of just admitting that you didn't really think through what you were saying.
