‘Enough To Actually Put Him In Jail’: Doctor Calls Trump’s COVID Response Medically Criminally Negligent

During an interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Thursday night, Dr. Kavita Patel said that Donald Trump’s negligent response to the pandemic would be grounds for a malpractice lawsuit or even time behind bars if he were in the medical field.

“If he were actually a clinician, his license would be taken away,” the doctor said. “He would be stripped of any privileges to do anything, not only sued for medical malpractice but enough to actually put him in jail.”

Dr. Patel called the “death and destruction” caused by the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic “mind-boggling.”

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Dr. Patel said:

Honestly, [Trump] would be — if he were actually a clinician, his license would be taken away. He would be stripped of any privileges to do anything, not only sued for medical malpractice but enough to actually put him in jail. And why am I not surprised? We’ve now known, Joy, that it’s not just covid. He’s done this on the border where there was forced hysterectomies. Unfortunately, history will not look kindly on the president and the administration and the people that have kind of led this and that’s exactly where it deserves to be. But the toll of death and destruction on its way there is just mind-boggling.

The Trump administration was pushing for ‘herd immunity’

Dr. Kavita Patel’s criticism of the outgoing president comes after a report in Politico revealed that one of Donald Trump’s appointees called for millions of Americans to be infected with COVID-19 as a way to develop “herd immunity.”

“Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk … so we use them to develop herd…we want them infected…” former HHS adviser Paul Alexander said in an email, according to the report.

Donald Trump seemed to agree with Alexander’s position because he repeatedly downplayed the virus, mocked the use of masks and urged his supporters to come to his rallies and other events where there was no social distancing.

Nearly a year into this pandemic, more than 317,000 Americans have died in no small part because of Donald Trump’s negligence.

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Sean Colarossi

Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.