As a sign of the times, the magazine, Scientific American, has broken with a 175-year-old tradition and come out the with a presidential endorsement – Joe Biden. They have never before made a presidential endorsement but given what has taken place and what continues to take under the Trump administration, the editorial board unanimously agreed they needed to take a stand. The following paragraph is from the very lengthy editorial appearing in the most recent issue discussing their reasons for taking this unprecedented action.
“The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September. He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges. That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden, who is offering fact-based plans to protect our health, our economy and the environment. These and other proposals he has put forth can set the country back on course for a safer, more prosperous and more equitable future.”1
Since the very beginning of the Trump administration, he has been like a one-man wrecking machine for any government agency involved in any type of scientific endeavor starting with pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords. Just recently, Trump appointed David Legates, a professor of climatology at the University of Delaware, and published climate change skeptic. Legates is also a member of the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that denies climate change is a serious threat to the world. [The Heartland Institute has been linked to the Koch brothers and worked with Phillip Morris to try to deny the link between smoking and cancer]. 1
And, of late, Trump has done everything in his power to undermine the scientists at the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Let’s be frank. Undermining and denying science is entirely consistent with the way Trump has operated his entire life. Facts and data are Trump’s biggest enemies. He talks about ‘the radical Left’ and the ‘Deep State’ but the fact is (pun intended), facts and data are Trump’s biggest enemy. So why is Trump so against facts and data and the associated science? The answer should be obvious. Trump is a pathological liar who lives in his own reality. It is a lot harder to lie in a world driven by facts and data.
Why do you think that he won’t release his tax returns? Putting aside any potential criminal ramifications that might result from the release, he knows that the facts contained in his tax returns will not match the ‘reality’ that he has tried to create about his wealth and his business acumen.
If you want to create your own reality, then you simply get rid of all of those people whose jobs are to deal with facts and data and use them to develop scientifically driven recommendations which is exactly what Trump has done in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the CDC, the NIH, the FDA, and now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA).
The problem with the denial and assault on facts is that in almost every case, the facts will ultimately win. It may take a long time but the facts will win. The only question is how much damage will be caused or how many lives will be lost because of policies driven by wishes, emotions and, in many cases, money, rather than by facts and data.
Remember how the airwaves used to be filled with advertisements for cigarettes? The tobacco companies, sometimes with help from various politicians, spent billions of dollars trying to convince people there was no connection between smoking and cancer. The facts ultimately won. I wonder how many lives would have been saved if the policies regarding tobacco products had been driven by science rather than money. And I wonder how many lives would have been saved if Trump’s COVID-19 response were driven by science versus ‘Trumpism.’
And think about this, if Trump and his minions rush a vaccine into use before the doctors and scientific community have done sufficient testing, simply for political reasons, and that vaccine ultimately has problems, he will have single-handedly undermined COVID and other vaccination programs well into the future. Again, at the cost of American lives.
Trump’s continued assault on science is a huge threat to the people of this country and the world and I applaud Scientific American for taking the stance they have.
If Trump’s assault on science in government agencies continues, we can soon look for Trump to appoint someone from the Flat Earth Society to head up NASA.
The top communications official at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) accused career government scientists of plotting against President Trump and told Trump supporters to arm themselves ahead of the November presidential election.
The career scientists “haven’t gotten out of their sweatpants except for meetings at coffee shops” to plot “how they’re going to attack Donald Trump,” Caputo said, according to the Times. “There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president.”
According to the Times, Caputo also warned Trump’s followers to be prepared for an armed insurrection, predicting the president would win but that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would refuse to concede the election.
All these statements sound like we will have a insurrection. Trump and his cronies should be arrested for treason. From the beginning Trump sounded like an anarchist and now we are seeing his actions coming to fruition.