Over the past 1,349 days that Trump has been president he has proven he was as unfit for the job as many of us thought he was while campaigning against him in 2016. In addition to nearly going to war with Iran and North Korea and starting a counterproductive cold war with China he has given all the crazies in the U.S. and beyond the confidence they needed to come out of their closets and support dangerous conspiracy theories and spew hatred towards those who aren’t as white or as Christian as they are. He has also repealed many environmental policies that were desperately needed to stave off the worst effects of climate change and he even moved to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord which was and still is humanity’s best hope of mitigating the climate crisis by limiting additional warming and minimizing the biodiversity losses and human suffering such additional warming would bring.

When he showed the world that he was scientifically illiterate with regards to climate change by saying things like it was a Chinese hoax and that he wasn’t a big believer in man-made climate change that should have been enough to disqualify him from office. However it wasn’t and three years later he showed the world how scientifically illiterate he was with regards to pandemics. Trump can not be blamed for Covid-19 however he can be blamed for much of the death and devastation it has caused in the U.S.. Just look at what he was saying early on, things that only an idiot in way over his head who’s key strategy was wishful thinking would say, things like “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” and “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” and “We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”.

At the same time he repeatedly gave the impression that face masks were not effective in reducing transmission and could perhaps do as much harm as they do good and like climate change he allowed wearing a face mask and taking Covid-19 seriously to be politicized. Not only did he set a bad example by holding large political rallies and by not encouraging participants to wear face masks he even went so far as to ridicule his political rival for not holding large rallies and for often wearing a face mask in public. Just ask yourself how many lives and how much economic damage did statements like these cause: “Just about everybody has a face mask on. They’ve learned about face masks — the good and the bad, by the way. It’s not a one-sided thing, believe it or not.” and “You know, there was a time when people thought it was worse wearing a mask. I let people make up their own decision.” and “In light of these studies, the CDC is advising the use of nonmedical cloth face covering as an additional voluntary public health measure. So it’s voluntary; you don’t have to do it. They suggested for a period of time. But this is voluntary. I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.”.

What kind of moral decency and presidential leadership is this? Please don’t make the same mistake again. Don’t think you’re making a statement by not voting because Biden wasn’t your first choice and isn’t progressive enough for you; and don’t vote for Trump because he and Fox News has scared you into thinking Biden is too socialist for the good of the country. Regardless of what you think of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris personally or politically the fact is they are infinitely better and more capable people than Donald J. Trump and that is what the U.S. and the rest of the world desperately needs right now, better and more capable people leading and governing countries, especially a country still as influential as the U.S.. So let this election be a Biden landslide and show Brazil and other countries with unfit leaders that these thug-like clowns can be voted out of office just as fast as they were voted in. I hope that the rhetoric that Trump, Bolsonaro, and other arrogant, immoral, and ill-informed leaders like them used to play upon the fears and hatred of the insecure, xenophobic, and easily manipulated among us will be studied and become common curriculum in order to prevent other unqualified narcissistic charlatans from gaining significant popular support and political power.

The disaster which this presidency is all started with Trump wanting to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., and now after three and a half years of Trump the Europeans want to ban Americans from entering the E.U.. Many of us knew a Trump presidency would be bad and did what we could to prevent it but nobody could have predicted it’d be this bad.

Trump might have effectively achieved his Muslim ban by making the U.S. so scary of a place that hardly any Muslims would even consider going there while he is president and all of his crazies have been given presidential passes via Twitter to come out of their basements and wave around their guns, confederate flags and other white power paraphernalia.

I’ve been living through the COVID-19 pandemic in a country whose official religion is Islam and as bad as the Malaysian government is it at least managed to properly handle this crisis. Not only do I feel safer in a Muslim majority country I feel safer living amongst Muslims because the vast majority of them aren’t as ignorant and irresponsible as many Americans are when it comes to social distancing and wearing a face mask in public.

During his first run for president Trump liked to talk about how other countries were laughing at us. It seems his solution to this imaginary laughter was to create a situation that is so sad that not even America’s adversaries can smile at these misfortunes. If the Trump administration handled the pandemic as well as Germany did nearly 100,000 lives could have been saved, and even more lives could have been saved if the U.S. had handled the crisis as well as Thailand and Taiwan did.

If all the other things didn’t do it for you, and they should have, then I hope the pandemic did. Even if Trump had handled foreign policy, climate change, and race issues in a decent manner the way he has bungled the handling of this pandemic is grounds for firing him in November. Biden certainly wasn’t my first choice or even my second but it’s obvious that he would be a far better president than Trump, especially during this pandemic and racial tension, so please be sure to register to vote and remind your friends and family that they can not sit this one out!

I’m not happy about the last two Tuesdays’ results either but if you’re really considering “Bernie or Bust” or writing in Bernie this November provided he is unable to make a comeback and win the Democratic nomination then you should learn more about the climate crisis and ask yourself if it would be moral to not vote blue no matter who in 2020.

This November Trump must lose and science and human decency must win. Biden wasn’t my first or even second choice but unfortunately after the disappointing results in Michigan yesterday it is increasingly looking like he will be my only choice. With that said I still hope Bernie has an amazing debate performance this Sunday and wins two or three states the following Tuesday. If Biden’s campaign can make a come back then so can Bernie’s!

Regardless of how unlikely a come back now is it’s not over until it’s over and the country benefits from hearing Bernie’s ideas and from Bernie leveraging the delegates and the grassroots support he has earned to help shift the Democratic party in the right direction like he did in 2016. So if you haven’t voted yet then don’t give up, your vote counts, even if Bernie doesn’t win you are still making a statement to the political establishment that says enough of politics as usual, we want real progress, we want people before party, we want people before profits, we want a better country, and we want a better world.