Nobel Economist Nails Why Right-Wingers' Coronavirus Tactics Are Scarily Familiar

Paul Krugman on Monday compared how right-wingers responded to the 2008 financial crash with the way theyre reacting to the coronavirus crisis.

And the Nobel Prize-winning economist found some chilling similarities.

In 2020 were relearning the lessons of 2008 namely, that Americas right-wingers cant handle the truth, Krugman wrote in his latest column for The New York Times , recalling that many conservative politicians and pundits initially ignored and denied the signs pointing to an economic crisis.

Explained Krugman:

The point is that Trumps luridly delusional response to the coronavirus and his conspiracy theorizing about Democrats and the news media arent really that different from the way the right dealt with the financial crisis a dozen years ago. True, last time the crazy talk wasnt coming directly from the president of the United States. But thats not the important distinction between then and now. No, whats different now is that denial and the resulting delay are likely to have deadly consequences.

Krugman also argued on Twitter why he believes that if you set out to design the worst possible leader for a crisis, it would be Trump.

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Read Krugmans full editorial here and his tweets below:

If you set out to design the worst possible leader for a crisis, it would be Trump. Aggressively ignorant, lashes out at anyone who tells him what he doesn't want to hear and tragically with a large following of Americans who believe what he says 1/

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If you set out to design the worst possible leader for a crisis, it would be Trump. Aggressively ignorant, lashes out at anyone who tells him what he doesn't want to hear and tragically with a large following of Americans who believe what he says 1/
Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 9, 2020

So he isn't just failing to respond to the crisis, he's actively blocking anyone else's efforts to respond and he's giving bad advice that millions will follow, making things worse 2/

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So he isn't just failing to respond to the crisis, he's actively blocking anyone else's efforts to respond and he's giving bad advice that millions will follow, making things worse 2/
Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 9, 2020