On Donald Trump’s Infection With COVID-19 and the Continued Need to Drive OUT the Trump/Pence Regime NOW

Updated October 5, 2020 | revcom.us

 

 

Donald Trump, his wife Melania Trump, at least several other people who work in the White House, some senators, and other major figures in and around the Trump/Pence regime have recently been infected with COVID-19. Trump has been hospitalized.

There are a lot of issues raised by this, which will be addressed later in this article. But the most important thing must not be allowed to fade from center stage:

Trump and Pence, the people around them, and a fascist movement that has been organizing for decades are in the midst of carrying out a rolling fascist coup. Let’s go back to the “ancient history” of the Tuesday night debate, where Trump refused, under repeated questioning, to renounce white supremacy.*

He refused, when asked, to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if Biden is officially declared to be the winner.

He encouraged some of his most violent and racist followers by name to “stand by” to go into the streets should the election results go against him. He encouraged more of his followers to go to the polls on Election Day and intimidate people, and he clearly indicated his intended target—especially Black and Latino people in what he calls “the Democrat cities”—declaring that “bad things are happening in Philadelphia.” (These followers have already been doing this in early voting sites in Virginia and Philadelphia.)

He declared, at the debate, his intention to use Republican majorities in Congress and the courts, including the Supreme Court, to ram through a second term, even if he loses the vote count.

In short: as Bob Avakian has written, Trump is already stealing the election and threatening violence. He is declaring that he intends to stay in office by any and all means, and he and his minions are actively preparing to do so.

None of this has stopped. None of what has happened with his COVID diagnosis has changed this basic dynamic. And the truth of what Refuse Fascism has been saying and standing for and organizing for—that in order for this fascism to be defeated people must begin to go into the streets NOW, day after day—is just as true at the moment you read this as it was Wednesday morning, or the week before that, or the month before that. Trump/Pence must be driven OUT NOW.

What to Make of the COVID Diagnosis?

In a situation like this, in which information has been withheld and may be badly distorted, it is important first of all to focus on what we know for certain to be true.

We know that throughout, there has been very little information released by the White House.

We know that Trump has made the denial of the seriousness of COVID, and defiance and sabotage of very basic health measures agreed upon by the scientific community, a cornerstone of his regime and his re-election campaign. He has done this to the extent that at the presidential debate, his family and some members of his entourage refused to wear masks once they were seated, despite having agreed to do so ahead of time.

We know that they then rejected requests by debate staff to do so and, by refusing, they may have endangered many people there. We know that more than 200,000 people have died in the U.S. as a result of COVID-19, the highest death toll in the world, at a higher rate than any other country with a comparable level of development.

While the disease would take a toll in even the best situation, and while “what-might-have-beens” are always uncertain, we know that different scientific experts have estimated that the excess deaths caused by the regime’s distortions, defiance, and ignore-ance of the science surrounding COVID may be in the range of 100,000 people.

We know that all this has made many things around the election uncertain. For instance, will the next debates go on as scheduled?

But again, one thing remains certain: they are actively moving in a rolling fascist coup to render any election results against Trump irrelevant; in this situation, voting is necessary but not enough: WE MUST BE IN THE STREETS.

 

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* A full two days after the debate, in response to the tremendous criticism of his blatant refusal to condemn white supremacy, Trump said on FOX News—to a far, far smaller audience than watched the debate—that he condemned white supremacy, as well as the Proud Boys. But this “backoff” means nothing; the bell cannot be unrung.  [back]