# Donald Trump is America's worst mass murderer **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 8, 2021, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980 "2021-01-08T00:34:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/1 "2021-01-08T00:34:42Z")
How many more? 370,000+ covid-19 deaths. 5 dead as a result of yesterday’s insurrection. How many more? Trump has killed more than 250 Americans for every day he has been in office. Fuck him and everyone who enables him. What a fucking shitshow the United States is; this isn’t “greatness”. How many more Americans are we going to allow this madman to kill? And what _else_ does that say about us and our society? What a fucking shitshow. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/2 "2021-01-08T00:43:20Z")
I’ve been saying that for nearly a year, now. The only positive to come out of the last four years is the realization (hopefully) that we can never let our guard down to again allow a sociopath to gain the highest position in the country. As American voters, a whole lot of us got lazy and stayed home because “he can’t possibly win, right?” ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/3 "2021-01-08T00:48:00Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > Trump has killed more than 250 Americans for every day he has been in office. While I despise Trump in every conceivable way, I don’t know that this is a defensible claim. It seems inevitable to me that the US would have had at least tens of thousands of COVID deaths even if our government’s response hadn’t been so incompetent. I don’t know what percentage of the deaths are due to Trump’s delusional incompetence alone. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/4 "2021-01-08T00:50:56Z")
I don’t care; fuck your stupid attempt at even-handedness. Trump is responsibile for every single Covid-19 death because he is in charge and he doesn’t care about _any_ of them. He _let_ people die. He _encouraged_ behaviors that caused deaths. He is responsible. ---
**Author:** ![MrMrmrmr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrmrmrmr/32/5828_2.png) [@MrMrmrmr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrMrmrmr)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/5 "2021-01-08T00:51:14Z")
After The management change, there will be lingering results from the previous administration. When can we start blaming the deaths on the new President? One month, two? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/6 "2021-01-08T00:58:17Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > I don’t care; fuck your stupid attempt at even-handedness. Trump is responsibile for every single Covid-19 death because he is in charge and he doesn’t care about _any_ of them. He _let_ people die. He _encouraged_ behaviors that caused deaths. Well, you’re not at all wrong about Trump’s disgustingly callous indifference and incompetence. He certainly did encourage (and is still encouraging) irresponsible behavior about the virus, and he certainly doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the deaths. One of the reasons he is wallowing in the incitement-to-violence schtick now is doubtless because it distracts public attention from COVID data. ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/7 "2021-01-08T01:08:10Z")
Trump being a sack of shit doesn’t mean you have say stupid shit. ---
**Author:** ![MrMrmrmr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrmrmrmr/32/5828_2.png) [@MrMrmrmr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrMrmrmr)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/8 "2021-01-08T01:19:25Z")
No answer for when Biden will be responsible? I am very interested in anyone’s answer. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/9 "2021-01-08T01:29:13Z")
> [@MrMrmrmr](#): > > No answer for when Biden will be responsible? > I am very interested in anyone’s answer. I think you probably have already figured out that everyone here, except perhaps the currently very pissed-off OP, holds that every individual is responsible for their own actions. Trump is responsible for the exacerbation of the pandemic tragedy by his culpable incompetence and indifference to the crisis, even if we can’t objectively equate that responsibility to a specific percentage of the total deaths to be laid at his door. Likewise, if Biden responds with culpable incompetence and indifference to the crisis once he’s President, that behavior is what he’ll be responsible for. But I’m kind of impressed by the avidity with which you’re trying to fix the earliest opportunity in 2021 to blame any and all COVID deaths directly on Biden (irrespective of whether or not he actually sabotages public-health measures as Trump has done), even at the cost of agreeing to blame all 350K COVID deaths so far directly on Trump. ---
**Author:** ![CoconutPete](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coconutpete/32/5294_2.png) [@CoconutPete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CoconutPete)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/10 "2021-01-08T01:31:43Z")
Putting all Covid deaths at Trump’s feet is retardation-level dumbassedness. Especially in light of presidents like George W. Bush’s hand in civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. ---
**Author:** ![MrMrmrmr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrmrmrmr/32/5828_2.png) [@MrMrmrmr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrMrmrmr)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/11 "2021-01-08T01:33:24Z")
Thank you for the response. I have no wish to blame Biden. I find the blame on Trump to be overstated. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/12 "2021-01-08T01:40:22Z")
> [@MrMrmrmr](#): > > I have no wish to blame Biden. I find the blame on Trump to be overstated. All right then, sorry to take you up so sharp. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/13 "2021-01-08T01:45:39Z")
I really can’t stand Trump at all but the OP is embarrassingly dumb. (The post, not the poster, I happen to like Bo.) ---
**Author:** ![MrMrmrmr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrmrmrmr/32/5828_2.png) [@MrMrmrmr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrMrmrmr)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/14 "2021-01-08T01:52:10Z")
What Trump did wrong was he didn’t listen to people.He is like a lot of managers who think their lip service minimizing a problem actually makes the problem go away. He definitely could have promoted mask usage, it would have been easy to put a patriotic spin to it. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/15 "2021-01-08T01:57:42Z")
Let’s use Germany as an example (Merkel is a fairly comparable leader to Hillary.) Their population is roughly 1/4 that of the United States. They have about 36,000 dead from Covid right now. So, multiply that by four, and that yields roughly 144,000 deaths, less than half that of America’s. It’s reasonable to surmise that a Hillary-led USA would had a similar outcome as Merkel’s Germany, although Americans may be worse rebels-against-the-mask-and-restrictions than Germans. (Does Germany have any anti-maskers?) So Trump is responsible for roughly 200,000 additional deaths. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/16 "2021-01-08T02:17:07Z")
> [@MrMrmrmr](#): > > He definitely could have promoted mask usage, it would have been easy to put a patriotic spin to it. Sure. If Trump had made this crisis into a sort of World War Flu, with exhortations to people to take precautions and look out for one another and tons of nifty high-tech approaches to public health logistics and business strategizing, with perhaps a bunch of decent short-term employment opportunities in the national Anti-Covid Mobilization Force or whatever, he would not only have prevented the unnecessary loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, he’d have won re-election in a walkover. Hell, he could even have had a more constructive Apprentice-like setup where he periodically showcased the most successful small-business implementation of anti-virus protocols or the most ingenious mask device or contact tracking app or whatever the fuck they could think of. We would have gone into some level of “war economy” mode and he could have swaggered around in all the uniforms he wanted, with gold-embossed facemasks with the Presidential Seal on them, sympathizing with stricken families from a prudent distance and exchanging salutes with first responders and yadda yadda yadda. He would have been a hero to his supporters and an exasperating showboater to his detractors, who nonetheless would have been hampered in their criticisms of him because his grandiose World War Flu schtick was actually being effective in containing the virus. But that, tragically, was just impossible for someone as egotistical and paranoid as Trump. He can’t be an inspiring leader who actually cares about the wellbeing of others, he can only be an overbearing boss who intimidates everybody by his overwhelming success. The pandemic was never anything more to him than a massive frustrating inconvenience that was “making him look bad” because of its disastrous economic impact. So he did what he does with anything that he think might make him look bad: he just made up a bunch of dismissive belittling bullshit about it and embarked on a personal vendetta with anyone who didn’t instantly endorse his bullshit. And so the whole pandemic response degenerated into the usual Trumpian clusterfuck that Trump himself was sick of hearing about and had no intention of paying any serious attention to after the first few weeks, at most. What a waste. ---
**Author:** ![MrMrmrmr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrmrmrmr/32/5828_2.png) [@MrMrmrmr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrMrmrmr)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/17 "2021-01-08T02:22:32Z")
Well said. ---
**Author:** ![CorpusNeptune](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/corpusneptune/32/17561_2.png) [@CorpusNeptune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CorpusNeptune)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/18 "2021-01-08T02:31:36Z")
My main problem with Trump is he can’t take a fucking L to save his life even if it’s blatantly obvious. He always insists he won the election by a long shot, even though it was the other way around, again, by a long shot. IIRC he also asked several swing states to search for any Trump vote they could find very recently. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/19 "2021-01-08T04:45:44Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Let’s use Germany as an example (Merkel is a fairly comparable leader to Hillary.) Their population is roughly 1/4 that of the United States. They have about 36,000 dead from Covid right now. > > So, multiply that by four, and that yields roughly 144,000 deaths, less than half that of America’s. It’s reasonable to surmise that a Hillary-led USA would had a similar outcome as Merkel’s Germany, although Americans may be worse rebels-against-the-mask-and-restrictions than Germans. (Does Germany have any anti-maskers?) > > So Trump is responsible for roughly 200,000 additional deaths. I completely agree that Trump is responsible for a much higher death toll than we’d see from a responsible leader. He was slow to close borders, he intentionally downplayed the severity of the pandemic, and he spent far too much time blaming China for everything as if the virus would leave America alone if he could divert blame. He was just awful. But I don’t think you can say that if a person like Merkel (or Hillary) were in charge it would lead to a death toll proportionate to Germany. There are other factors that would make things worse, Two things come to mind. The first is that the government is decentralized. There’s a reason why restrictions were done state by state and were inconsistently applied. It’s not just because Trump shrugged and let the states handle it, it’s because the states are empowered to govern themselves and make their own rules. A nationwide lockdown like you see in other countries just isn’t legal in the US. A statesman might convince governors to follow his lead (perhaps with incentives in the form of federal aid for compliance) but he can’t force anyone. He could certainly have done more but he doesn’t have the sweeping federal powers other nations might have. The second thing is that Americans are too damn stubborn and independent. We are taught to be proud of our individualism, it’s part of our indoctrination from our youth, and we just aren’t prone to do things we don’t want to. Voluntary compliance is not in our culture. So we won’t play along very well in a time like this, to our detriment. So I do believe Trump was a nightmare of a “leader” to have during one of the biggest crises in our history, but even an ideal leader in the United States wouldn’t make our country fare as well as others around the world. We have other problems making it worse. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980/20 "2021-01-08T08:46:22Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > (Does Germany have any anti-maskers?) Yes. But the majority of the country regards them as, and the majority of the media treats them as, the idiot lunatics they are. They exist, and a handful of fringe-extremist politicians pay them lip service, but otherwise they’re marginalized and have no influence on policy. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-is-americas-worst-mass-murderer/929980.md?page=2)