Thursday, July 09, 2020

Ralph Reed explains why conservative evangelicals don't care about Trump's COVID-19 incompetence

Via a tweet, conservative evangelical leader Ralph Reed tells why the religious right will continue to support Trump no matter what he does.

Let's be honest.

Conservative evangelical and the religious right leaders don't care about Trump's botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nor do they care about how he continues muck up efforts to contain the pandemic.  They don't care about the over three million people infected nor do they care about the over 133,000 who have died. And they certainly don't care about Trump attempting to force schools to reopen.

 Just like they haven't cared about anything else Trump has done over the past three years (lying, bullying, kissing up to Putin, etc etc) which are supposed to be against  their constantly and exhaustingly trumpeted Christian morals and values.

The reason is so simple that people tend to take it for granted. But I will let conservative evangelical leader Ralph Reed (funny how hardly anyone talks about his role in the Jack Abramoff scandal of 2006) tell you all you need to know via a recent tweet he sent.

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro reportedly said 'wearing masks is a fa**ot thing.' He tested positive for COVID within days.

Jair Bolsonaro
Far be it from me to gloat, but a certain homophobic foreign president's recent misfortunes is giving off a delightful feeling of schadenfreude  .

 From LGBTQNation:
Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, nicknamed “The Trump of the Tropics,” has replicated his political idol’s response to the worldwide coronavirus pandemic with similarly disastrous results. Bolsonaro reportedly told staff and visitors to his office that “wearing masks is a f**got thing,” according to journalist Mônica Bergamo. Within days, he tested positive for COVID-19.

Other news sources have said that Bolsonaro actually said "fairies." According to The Advocate:

Bolsonaro, who has been as resistant to masks as Donald Trump is, made the comment to staffers earlier in the crisis, Folha de São Paulo columnist Monica Bergamo reports. Her story is in Portuguese, and the full version is available only to subscribers, but The Guardian reports that Bolsonaro taunted aides who were wearing masks by saying the protective gear was “‘coisa de viado’ (a homophobic slur that roughly translates as ‘for fairies’).” Some Twitter users have translated it as “for fags” or “a faggot thing.”

It really doesn't matter to me because either way, Bolsonaro slurred the LGBTQ community. And the main thing is the irony of the situation, seeing that he has a long history of making homophobic statements. According to Wikipedia (and taken from other sources), here are just a few:

In a June 2011 interview with Playboy, Bolsonaro said that "I would be incapable of loving a gay son", and added that he would prefer any gay son of his "to die in an accident".  In the same interview, Bolsonaro said that if a gay couple moved in next door to him, it would lower the market value of his house. 
In a July 2011 interview with the magazine Época, Bolsonaro said that he would "fight to prevent the distribution of the 'gay kit'" [a set of guidelines proposed by UNESCO to promote the rights of the LGBT community in primary schools] because "their intention is to promote homosexuality, which is an affront to the family structure, and if that makes me prejudiced, then I'm prejudiced and very proud of it". 
In the 2013 BBC documentary Out There, by British actor Stephen Fry, Bolsonaro said that "no father is ever proud of having a gay son," and that "we Brazilians do not like homosexuals." 
In a 2011 interview with Jornal de Notícias, Bolsonaro linked homosexuality to pedophilia, claiming that "many of the children who are adopted by gay couples will be abused by these couples". He further argued that Brazil does not need legislation specifically targeting homophobia, because "most homosexuals are murdered by their respective pimps at hours when good citizens are already asleep". 
In a May 2002 interview with the Folha de S.Paulo, Bolsonaro told the newspaper, "If I see two men kissing in the street, I will beat them." He then publicly defended beating gay children by saying: "If your child starts to become like that, a little gay, you take a whip and you change their behavior."

He's a real charmer, isn't he? And wouldn't you know it, he's knee deep in a corruption scandal. I guess Bolsonaro is more like Trump than he would care to admit.