Bette Midler calls Trump a 'murderer' over Covid-19 response: 'Biggest catastrophe to ever befall our nation'
Launching a scathing attack on Donald Trump, Bette Midler said the US president is murdering Americans because of his and his administration's poorly-thought-out policies to curb the coronavirus pandemic. "#DonaldJTrump is a murderer," she wrote on Twitter. "Stupid, callous uncaring; all in all the biggest catastrophe to ever befall our poor nation. I can’t stop crying."
The 'For the Boys' actress, 74, shared a link to a 4,600-word New York Times article titled 'Inside Trump’s Failure: The Rush to Abandon Leadership Role on the Virus' to support her case. The piece goes in-depth about the country's failure to deal with the pandemic — the US has reported over 3.7 million positive cases of Covid-19 and more than 140,000 deaths — and how that can be traced back to mid-April when the White House tried to play down the serious problem. It also addresses the dangerous rhetoric Trump has taken regarding the pandemic, from repeatedly playing down the virus' impact on the country to his refusal to wear a mask in public, until recently, by insisting they were not necessary despite experts' consensus stating otherwise.
Midler has been a vocal critic of the president during his tenure, and this is not the first time that she has taken a swipe at Trump and his administration on social media. She had previously suggested that Trump was lying about not showing any Covid-19 symptoms and about his test being negative because he had shown consistently throughout his four years in office that he would lie when it suited him. "You know, #Donald says he has tested negative for #Coronavirus. But why should we believe him? He has lied over 16,000 times in the last three years! Why would he not be lying now?” she wrote on Twitter. The tweet had come following an announcement by White House physician Sean P Conley that Trump's Covid-19 test was negative. Trump had taken the test after reports that a member of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro's delegation that recently visited Mar-a-Lago had come down with the disease.
The actress went on to say that Trump is "mentally ill" for calling an investigation into the involvement of Obama-era officials who played a role in the apparent "unmasking" of his former NSA Michael Flynn when people around the country were dying of Covid-19. "80,000 people are DEAD. 36 MILLION out of work. Did you ever imagine in your wildest dreams that it could come to this? & what does this awful man do as our leader?” she tweeted in May. "He goes after his predecessor? Threatens to jail his opponent? America, face it! He’s mentally ill. He is unfit." Midler had also attacked Trump over his decision not to re-open Obamacare marketplaces to new customers. She said "there is no end to the cruelty and malignancy of @realdDonaldJTrump and his horrifying administration" and that "his overwhelming jealousy of @BarackObama will kill us all."
The US has its worst day since the pandemic started earlier this week when it was reported that 77,000 new Covid-19 cases were registered on a single day. The number of deaths in the same 24-hour period was reported to be over 1,000.