Do Americans need a lunatic, serial liar president anymore?
Rabi Sankar Bosu

Editor's note: Rabi Sankar Bosu is an Indian contributor to Chinese media outlets. He writes about Chinese politics, social and cultural issues, and China-India relations with a special interest in the Belt and Road Initiative. The article reflects the author's views and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Once upon a time, there was a king (president) who had a penchant for telling lies with evil intentions to scapegoat others. Perhaps the American people will read such stories about their 45th President, Donald Trump, in the future.

Since taking office in 2017, President Trump has blatantly and repeatedly lied, which only exhibits his power-grabbing nature. It seems that he has been too eager to harm his own people for political gain while blaming China and other countries on several issues. Such serial lies have tarnished the post of the U.S. presidency and attracted negative reactions from at home and abroad.

It's not sure whether Trump will be defeated in the November 7 presidential election, but it's certain that if he is re-elected as U.S. president, it will be a mockery to U.S. democracy and a huge disgrace for the American people.

His thousands of false statements over the past years are a calculated move to cover up the ineptitude and incompetence of his self-glorified government. His anti-China campaign for the coming election, tying his Democrat rival Joseph R. Biden to China, so-called claims of bringing jobs from China to America or threatening to cut off the whole relationship with the world's second-largest economy and his incompetent response to the coronavirus crisis have all eroded his trust and accountability as U.S. president at home while making him a laughingstock on the world stage.

The "bombardment of lies" that Trump has told as U.S. president have already crowned him "Lord of the Lies." U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the President "an incompetent liar," branding him "the most dangerous person in the history of America."

Indeed, Trump has become a living example of what happens to the country when petty interests swallow its leader. His appointment of Vice-President Mike Pence as the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force was nothing but erroneous.

Bernie Sanders, Senator from Vermont, wrote in an Op-Ed for USA Today, "Trump must stop spreading lies and fear, and leave the science to scientists and health professionals, not politicians." In fact, the coronavirus task force committee should be made up of medical scientists and experts, not political friends of the president.

But alas! "A rogue does not listen to a discourse on honesty." The current U.S. president has proved that the achievement of political goals is more important than the health and well-being of the people of his country.

The most worrying feature of Trump's character is that he strongly believes whatever the fault is does not rest upon him. So far, the world has witnessed that he loves to place the responsibility for various problems within his country on former President Barack Obama.

And now, when the United States is witnessing the coronavirus crisis that has unveiled the hollowness of U.S. healthcare under his presidency, he has found an easier solution to shield his administration's failures by shifting his responsibility to China and the World Health Organization (WHO).

An emergency medical technician moves a patient to an ambulance to the New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital in New York, the United States, April 15, 2020. /AP

An emergency medical technician moves a patient to an ambulance to the New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital in New York, the United States, April 15, 2020. /AP

The sad thing is that when the need for a collective fight against the coronavirus pandemic is increasingly being felt all over the world, he has begun to walk in the opposite direction, undermining the value of human lives in favor of saving the economy.

Despite having a smaller population than China and India, the United States has by far the highest death toll worldwide, and the number of infected people continues to rise with each passing day. Tragic but true, more Americans were killed in the last three months than the Vietnam War from 1954 to 1975.

The death toll clearly suggests that the world's richest and most powerful nation has failed to address this contagious epidemic. In other words, his maxim "You shall have to pay before you take away the goods" has ultimately turned into an "absolute chaotic disaster," as claimed by Obama.

Trump's inefficient handling of the pandemic is not only exacerbating the death and destruction in the U.S., but it is also crippling the global efforts to deal with the ongoing crisis.

He has blamed the WHO for delaying the issuance of a global health emergency. But he has turned a blind eye to the WHO's significant role in eradicating various deadly infectious diseases from smallpox to polio from the world. As such, his freezing U.S. funding of the WHO has actually hobbled global public health.  And by doing so, he has sinned against humanity.

Since the coronavirus outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan last December, rabid Trump, his cabinet members and administration officials have been audaciously attaching SARS-CoV-2 to Wuhan to politically stigmatize China on the global stage, which is totally wrong since nobody knows where it originated.

Instead of looking at China's remarkable achievements in fighting the pandemic as well as its medical assistance to the hardest-hit countries, Trump has sped up discrimination against China, uttering so many lies ranging from the so-called manipulation of China's epidemic figures to the Wuhan laboratory accident theory.

But Trump's accusations are completely inconsistent with facts since China offered transparent epidemic data to the international community at the earliest possible time in a responsible manner.

Eminent historian and author Yuval Noah Harari wrote in Time Magazine opinion piece, "Today, China can teach countries all over the world many important lessons about coronavirus," further commenting that "the current U.S. administration has made it very clear to the world that the U.S. no longer has any real friends – it has only interests."

Indeed, now America is losing its role as a global leader due to Trump's narcissist "Me First" policy. His gambling on the lethal virus has become a nightmare for the majority of Americans. It doesn't matter to him how many lives are lost!

With November's election approaching, it's time for Americans to ponder the question: Do they need a braggadocious president anymore?

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com.)