Trump Doesn't Care About Schools or Kids

Trump has repeatedly insisted that young people are “virtually immune” to COVID-19. “They don’t have a problem,” said Trump. “They just don’t have a problem.” Trump’s official White House statements indicated that schools could “reopen safely” because “children are at an extremely low risk for a serious illness or death,” while Trump insisted that children “don't bring it home easily” to give to parents or others. That ignored 570 children who had already come down with COVID-19–Associated Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome by July, as well as studies that showed COVID-19 was spread by children just as well as by adults. 

Just this week, 20-year-old California University of Pennsylvania football player Jamain Stephens died from COVID-19. This tragedy came less than a week after the medical director for the Big 10 revealed that a third of college athletes who had contracted COVID-19 showed lasting heart damage. That was true even with student athletes who had an asymptomatic case of the disease. It’s not just the blood clots caused by COVID-19 that are causing damage. The virus directly damages heart muscle along with lung tissue.

This tragic news comes on the heels of news that Trump called the commissioner of the Big 10 and callously pressured him to have the athletes play football. “We're pushing very hard,” said Trump. “I think they want to play, and the fans want to see it, and the players have a lot at stake, including possibly playing in the NFL.” As the sad story of Jamain Stephens shows, the players have a lot more at stake than NFL careers that are waiting for only a small fraction of those who take the fields in college.

But the pressure that Trump put on student athletes and colleges is only a fraction of what he’s applied to schools in an attempt to force them to open. That includes threats to withhold federal funds from schools that do not reopen “fully” and “in person.” The last pointless effort of Senate Republicans to put together a bill they had no intention of passing reflected this desire by restricting two-thirds of school funding only to schools that “physically” reopened. 

Trump doesn't care about anyone's kids-- he only cares about his own.