Trump's family of monsters committing American 'genocide' in the name of coronavirus response: Yale professor
The Donald Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic has once again come under harsh criticism. Gregg Gonsalves, a professor of epidemiology and law at Yale University and an AIDS activist, has blasted the Trump administration over its handling of the pandemic, describing it as "awfully close to genocide by default". In a Twitter tirade over the last few days, Gonsalves also lashed out at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Trump's daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, both of whom are also the president's senior advisors.
On Wednesday, May 6, Gonsalves asked how many people would die in the crisis till the November 3 presidential election. He also brought in the color factor asking how many African-American, Latino and other people of color would be lost. "This is getting awfully close to genocide by default. What else do you call mass death by public policy?" he asked in a tweet. In one of its reports, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that minorities have been more vulnerable to the Covid-19 virus since the black and Hispanic people fill "essential" jobs in large numbers. Their living conditions and lack of health insurance are also among factors that make these people easier prey for the virus.
"The risk of infection may be greater for workers in essential industries who continue to work outside the home despite outbreaks in their communities, including some people who may need to continue working in these jobs because of their economic circumstances,” the CDC said.
Gonsalves asked in another tweet whether the government could be held responsible for the outbreak of the disease under international law. “And I am being serious here: what is happening in the US is purposeful, considered negligence, omission, failure to act by our leaders. Can they be held responsible under international law?” he tweeted.
Yale professor calls Trump, Ivanka & Kushner 'monsters'
The professor then slammed the first family in another post, calling Trump, Ivanka and Kushner "monsters" who only cared about themselves and were responsible for the deaths of thousands of American people. He did not name any of them and said "you, your father and your husband" while responding to a tweet from the businesswoman-cum-politician on the National Day of Prayer on Thursday, May 7.
"Pray for your own souls today. You are monsters who care only about yourselves," Gonsalves said in a tweet.
More than 1.2M people have been hit by COVID-19 in the US while the death toll has crossed 75,000. Globally, over 3.8M people have been hit while at least 269,000 have died.
Gonsalves also criticized Pelosi saying her "lack of vision, small-bore solutions and pre-emptive surrender" to the Republicans made things no better. He also added, "If @TheDemocrats won't fight now for real change, will they ever?"
The professor also took a dig at the American culture in general in a series of tweets, saying: "Most, if not all of us, will not react, we may complain, we may be angry about it, but we'll see it as someone else's responsibility to deal with. This is a culture, a country that has lost its moral compass." He said this in reference to a piece written by Jay Rosen titled 'The Plan is to have no Plan' in which he ripped into the Trump administration's coronavirus-response mechanism.