Honestly, we kind of hate that we’re writing about this. Because common sense shouldn’t have to be a headline.
But that was the big headline all weekend. Getting even more space than Florida recording a record single-day number for anywhere in the U.S. of new COVID-19 cases: 15,300. (Because of course, that was more of an inevitability). And it outplayed by a big margin Trump’s unpardonable commutation of political dirty-trickster Roger Stone’s prison sentence after he covered for Trump, (at least as far as our social media feeds are concerned.)
And it is kind of astounding how quickly people who were so opposed to masks because the President was, did a 180. And that does underline a big difference between the Right and Left. Because while we’ve seen a fair number of Trump supporters who in the blink of an eye changed their views on masks as soon as the President wore one (and until then thought they were defending him by aggressively not wearing one), we haven’t seen one Liberal who says they now aren’t going to wear a mask because the President just did.
We’ll add to that: “Mask Looks good!”, says Fox.
And the only way of explaining that sudden flip-flop in the minds of Trump supporters is that they truly believe Liberals are behind some really broad organized conspiracy to tell them what to do and take away their freedoms. And now that Trump’s suddenly telling them masks are not part of that (after messaging for a long time that they were), that’s why they’re suddenly OK. And guess what? That’s great. Especially if he keeps up the example and it’s not just a thing for when he visits hospitals or a place where he feels the blowback will be more damaging to him politically if he doesn’t wear a mask than if he does. That, we’re not too sure about.
(Oh, and one more thing related to something the President brought up this weekend: the only reason Liberals and the media are so critical of Trump playing golf is that he ripped into President Obama so many times for playing golf, and pledged—he pledged—that he wouldn’t play much if at all were he elected President. Instead, he’s played a lot more than Obama (not less, as he claims in a Tweet, unless you want to count Obama’s 8 years in office as equal to Trump’s 3 1/2.) So this is not because the media is being “unfair”. If he hadn’t torn into Obama every time he played, no one would care!)
We’ve already had a lot to say about Trump’s refusal to wear a mask and its impact on the spread of the disease. So when CNN’s Jake Tapper suggests: “Some day someone will do a study on how many lives might have been saved” had Trump worn a mask earlier, we reply, no need really to wait for a “study” (you earnest Liberal!), those numbers are already glaringly obvious.
So all we’ve got to add is the following, and it’s from the memoirs of President Ulysses S. Grant; remembering at the same time that it was Trump who declared himself a wartime President, assuming labeling himself as such would help him politically:
“Experience proves that the man who obstructs a war in which his nation is engaged, no matter whether right or wrong, occupies no enviable place in life or history.”