Trump plans on 'sacrificing others' with new coronavirus strategy, former Bush aide warns

As Donald Trump pivots towards securing his reelection with a strong economy, commentators warn that American lives are at risk

A political commentator and speech-writer for president George W. Bush has theorised that Donald Trump has chosen to endanger American lives in a bid to secure his re-election.

David Fum, who was credited with coining the “axis of evil” phrase pushed by president Bush in the aftermath of 9/11, used Twitter to describe the new White House strategy on Tuesday.

“It’s a desperate gamble to save himself by sacrificing others,” tweeted the former president Bush aide.

In a Twitter thread, Fraum described how a plan to pivot coronavirus messaging toward the economy was centred around the reelection of the president, and not on public health.

“Trump is consciously choosing to risk higher virus casualties in Q2 in hope of jolting the economy into revival in Q3 to save his re-election in Q4,” said Frum on Twitter.

“Many leaders would be daunted by the human costs of Trump’s desperate re-election,” added Frum.

“[But] for an extreme NPD case like Donald Trump, the lives and troubles of other people are remote, incomprehensible – less real to him”.

In an interview on MSNBC on Friday, Frum commented that president Trump would soon see what happens when you reopen an economy during a pandemic.

“Let’s accept that there may be hundreds of thousands, or some double hundreds of thousands, of Americans killed,” warned Frum.

He warned that many of those who die from Covid-19 in the coming weeks and months would be those who are most exposed to the virus.

“They’re going to be mostly poor and minorities, mostly not going to be Trump voters,” he added.

Those comments come amid reports that the White House has begun to transform it’s messaging on the virus, which has now infected more than one million Americans and killed almost 60,000.

On Saturday, Axios reported that a Trump administration official had said White House messaging would begin pivoting towards “the economy and a more hopeful, forward-looking message.”

Meanwhile, medical and diseases experts such as Dr. Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci will start taking a ‘backseat’ during coronavirus updates.

Frum added in another tweet that “the punch” of economic reopening would occur because there is no current national plan to test and trace cases of the Covid-19 virus.

“We’re almost four months into the pandemic, and the US is at last beginning to test on a large scale. But the point of testing is tracing. The point of tracing is isolation,” commented Frum.

“There are no national plans to do either of *those* things. The plan is to reopen without – take the punch”.

The president announced on Tuesday evening that 5 million tests for coronavirus would need to be conducted every day before the US economy reopened in June.

That number is disputed by scientists and experts, with some groups citing a need for up to 20 million tests a day before the US economy could safely re-start.