 It is still shocking to me that we have a president who is just pretending like the pandemic is over It's no longer an issue because to him. He doesn't feel as if he can redeem himself He already bungled COVID-19. So why even try going forward? It's a political loser. So he's just not gonna touch it In fact, his staffers are reportedly Literally hoping that Americans grow quote-unquote numb to COVID-19 deaths That's where we're at So he is living in this alternative reality because you know, it's better for him politically But it's not just that he's living in his own reality He's forcing his delusions on all of us because he's forcing us as well to pretend as if the pandemic is over and to pretend As if it doesn't exist and it's not really a thing and the way he's doing this is by forcing governors to resume schooling as Usual and not have any differences in the curriculum pretend as if the pandemic isn't actually a thing This is the hill he wants to die on so as the hills Brett Samuels and Jesse Hellman report President Trump on Tuesday said the White House would put pressure on governors to get schools open in the fall amid rising Coronavirus cases in the United States at a White House summit Trump signaled the full-court press Saying it would not be good politically to keep schools closed We don't want people to make political statements or do it for political reasons They think it's going to be good for them politically so they keep the schools closed No way Trump said during a White House event with government officials and school administrators We're very much going to put pressure on governors and everyone else to open the schools Trump added after again claiming that the increase in cases is a result of increased testing So he is using the same excuse the reason why it only seems like we're doing worse than other developed countries Is because we're doing more testing again that is not persuasive Nobody actually who's serious believes that now sometimes Donald Trump will say something really stupid or ask a really stupid question And he'll be like the lone idiot in his administration And you know people around him smarter people will try to convince him to not do the completely idiotic thing For example, he wanted to reopen the country by Easter. He asked why we're not nuking Hurricanes to stop them He asked why we can't just allow COVID-19 to wash over America Apparently that is his thing now that he's doing but I mean sometimes he will receive pushback From the people who are closest to him But not this time because they have his back the Education Secretary as well as the HHS Secretary are all on board with what he's trying to do because as Politico's Nicole Gagliano explains Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Tuesday Lashed out at school districts that haven't promised to fully reopen their schools this fall Blasting education leaders who won't accept risk and give up and didn't try to launch summer instruction During a call with governor She slammed the Fairfax district for its distance learning disaster in the spring and offering a choice of only zero or two days of in-person Instruction moving forward according to notes of a call with governors obtained by Politico earlier in the pandemic DeVos had been more open to kids learning both online and during in-person classes Education leaders need to examine real data and weigh risk risk is involved in everything We do from learning to ride a bike to riding a rocket into space and everything in between she said HHS Secretary Alex Azar separately backed up DeVos Saying parents should expect schools to deliver a safe learning environment for their children even during a pandemic So according to Betsy DeVos learning to ride a bike Going to school during a highly contagious deadly pandemic. These are both equally risky I mean, this is absolutely absurd and notice that they're moving the goalpost So back in summer it was okay for you to construct the curriculum of mostly online courses And then you supplement that with some in-person days But now they're not even allowing for any compromises in spite of the necessity to minimize Person-to-person contact as cases soar now they're just saying no you're not gonna do that It's gonna be our way or the highway You're going to pretend as if everything is fine And there's no pandemic and you're gonna send your kids back to school whether you like it or not And Donald Trump is trying to enforce this at the university level by punishing universities that offer only online classes in the fall in fact if a university in an attempt to combat COVID-19 offers online courses only then Trump is going to restrict the visas of international students specifically F1 and M1 visas They will not be allowed to stay in the countries if the university that they attend only offers an online course So in other words This is a huge fuck you to anyone who came to the United States to get an education and This is incredibly cruel And I know a lot of people who will be affected by this because in my PhD program Most of the students were international students and the way that it usually works is if you're going to take online courses You need to take at least three credits. I believe it depends probably on the university in order to maintain that visa Except they had a waiver for this back in spring But now they're just withdrawing the visa and they're saying look if you do all online to social distance Then you can't study at this institution So what you need to do is either take that semester off or you can try to find you know a different university and actually do in-person courses and you know put yourself at risk But this is also something that fucks with grad students because if you are a PhD student and you know You finished all of your coursework and you're just doing your dissertation research and you're teaching classes And you don't need to actually take any credits Then you basically have to take credits when you don't need to put yourself at an extra risk Unnecessarily all to appease Donald Trump for his xenophobic reasons like he's trying to find an excuse To use ICE against immigrants even legal immigrants, but I mean this is preposterous What is happening here is honestly just baffling to me And I don't think we're fully going to appreciate how absurd this is Until it's like 10 or 20 years down the line and we look back at this moment The fact that we allow this to happen is astonishing They are not just pretending like COVID-19 isn't a thing, but they're forcing everyone else To go along with it pretend like it's not a thing and if that puts you at risk So be it now putting aside the university level thing like if you are a parent You are faced with an impossible decision come fall. You can either Send your kid to school and risk them contracting COVID-19 and bringing it home to you or maybe someone in your family Who's in you know compromised or elderly and vulnerable Or you can try to homeschool them But the problem is that a lot of working-class families don't even have that as an option, right? Because school is basically a form of daycare because the cost of daycare is too high for people So they usually just send their kids to school while both parents work and that's What they do like that's the school watches their children for them But if you don't want to get COVID-19 then that's not an option I mean this is really putting people in a horrible predicament and trump on twitter keeps talking about the need to reopen schools normally But if you want that to happen then you have to solve the problem You can't pretend as if COVID-19 isn't a thing anymore You have to actually stop the spread of it and there are things that he can do measures He can take as president to do just that so this isn't an issue So we don't have to fight him on it, right? Require people to wear masks sign in an executive order that says you are not allowed to enter a federal building without a mask Right? Convince your supporters to wear masks by wearing one yourself. There are things you can do To make it so that way this isn't an issue But because he isn't capable of doing the right thing and already views this as a political loser since he's checked out He's just saying fuck it. You're gonna pretend like this isn't a thing the pandemic's over um or else I mean this is truly despicable, but it really speaks to the cruelty Of this administration. He has no empathy for human beings. He doesn't care about what he's doing He just wants to do whatever will help him politically whatever is politically expedient It's exactly the course of action that he's gonna take even if he is hurting americans in a concrete way You could support the humanist report at patreon.com Slashed humanist report But trust me i'd have way more supporters at patreon if that was my podcast said