Chomsky on Trump Coronavirus Response: ‘The Country Is Simply Run by Sociopaths’

Friday on “Democracy Now!,” leftist political activist Noam Chomsky slammed President Donald Trump and his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Chomsky said, “We have a freak show in Washington, a totally dysfunctional government, which is causing enormous problems. And it’s not that nothing was known. A pandemic was anticipated all through Trump’s term, even before. His reaction was to cut back preparation for it. Astonishingly, this continued even after the pandemic hit.”

He continued, “So, on February 10th, when it was already serious, Trump released his budget for the coming year. Take a look at it. The budget continues the defunding of the Center for Disease Control and other government institutions responsible for health, continues to defund them. It increases funding for some things, like fossil fuel production, gives new subsidies to the fossil fuel industries. I mean, it’s as if the country is simply — maybe not “as if” — the country is simply run by sociopaths.”

He added, “And the result, so, we cut back on the efforts to deal with the pandemic that’s taking shape, and we increase the efforts to destroy the environment, in which — the efforts in which the United States, under Trump, is in the lead in racing to the abyss. Now, bear in mind that that’s — I don’t have to tell you — is a far more serious threat than the coronavirus. Now, this is bad and serious, particularly in the United States, but we’ll recover somehow, at severe cost. We’re not going to recover from the melting of the polar ice sheets, which is leading to a feedback effect, well known, that increases — as they melt, there’s less reflective surface, more absorption in the dark seas, the warming that’s melting increases. That’s just one of the factors that’s leading to destruction unless we do something about it.”

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