The Trump Death Clock now lives in Times Square
at 43rd and 7th, at 1500 Broadway.
That’s the building that it’s at.
And, you know, what we found — people read
my editorial, when I was writing it for The
Washington Post, and I showed it to friends
and acquaintances, who were supportive of
what I was thinking, but they were, you know,
giving me good editorial ideas.
And over time, they said, “You know, if
you’re so focused on the Debt Clock, why
don’t you find out about putting a Death
Clock in the real world?
Why just do it as a website?”
And, of course, I had thought about that,
but I didn’t know — my gosh, what must
a billboard cost, you know, or a big clock
to put up?
Well, when we poked around a little bit — friends
had offered to give some support — we found
that, maybe not surprisingly, billboard space
is not very expensive right now, because,
after all, there’s nobody on the streets
in the height of a pandemic, if people are
sort of living by the guidelines that they’ve
been supposed to be under.
And that means that billboard space in New
York was much, much more affordable than one
would have ever dreamt, a tiny, tiny fraction
of what it usually costs to advertise in Times
Square, which is one of the most expensive
areas of the world.
So, some friends put together some support
to really put this up, to put it up and start
the ball rolling, which we hope will roll
across the country.
We hope that the Trump Death Clock in New
York can be emulated in small towns and big
cities across the country, where people can
get a billboard that’s sitting dormant,
or they can actually just project it.
You know, those little projectors that people
have, you can project it on a building, you
can project it on your house, just to remind
your community of what the incredible cost
has been of the reckless handling of this.
And this is not just about being critical.
As you say, you know, this could have happened
to any president.
So, the fact is, there is a specific calculation
that we base the Death Clock on.
We’re not just saying, “Oh, Donald Trump,
you’ve been bad,” in some general, blurry
way.
We wanted to find the single calculation that
was most damning and most specific.
In other words, we looked for the most conservative
number.
And that number was so damning, that — you
know, reasonable people will debate.
The president’s defenders will say, “Oh,
it was China’s fault,” or “It was the
World Health Organization,” or “It was
the CDC,” or blame individuals, blame anybody
but the White House.
Well, they can do that.
Trump’s’s detractors will point to things
that happened much earlier, like that his
team disbanded the White House pandemic directorate
in 2018, got rid of people chiefly concerned
with this kind of outbreak.
Or they might have pointed to — they want
to say, “Well, in January and February,
the intelligence services gave the president
countless warnings about the need to move
quickly.”
That is all true, and reasonable people can
debate that.
But they can debate it 'til they're not reasonable.
We wanted a single calculation, and that’s
the basis of the Trump Death Clock, which
just looks at one period around which there
is no debate, and that is the period between
March 9 and March 16.
And after Dr. Fauci and others made clear
that they had knowledge that mitigation guidelines
were not put in when they should have been,
the question is, “OK, what was the cost
of that?”
Because when a virus is spreading exponentially,
as viruses do, every second counts.
And in my view, every life counts.
So the question is, “The seconds that you
lost, Mr. President, while you dithered”
— you know, look at South Korea.
South Korea, at that same moment that we were
beginning to see the outbreak of this, they
instituted mitigation guidelines, and they
ended up with 300 deaths to our 70,000, 80,000.
You know?
So, you’re in a position where the enormity
of the mistake, Donald Trump made a political
calculation, whatever his reasoning was.
He made a bet.
The bet failed, was a failure.
At what cost?
And at what cost being borne by the American
people?
We’re talking to Eugene Jarecki, who has
just erected the Trump Death Clock in Times
Square.
Eugene, have you gotten response from the
administration?
We have not heard from the administration.
Most of what we’ve heard from, frankly,
are from people who are detractors of the
president, who wish that we had used a higher
number.
They say, “Your Death Clock only shows that
the administration is sort of attributable
to 60% of the death toll in America,” because
that’s what it shows.
Basically, Drs. Jewell and Jewell, in the
piece they published in The New York Times
and in other releases of their findings, said,
had the president and his team moved on March
9 rather than March 16, 60% of American lives
would have been saved.
That’s a harrowing statistic, that puts
us today, at this moment, at 48,337 deaths
could have been averted had mitigation guidelines
been put in place earlier.
To me, that is damning enough.
And to try to go earlier and enter the debate,
the big echo chamber of hyperbolic claims
that will go in both directions, they may
even have truth in them, but the president
will try to use that to get out of accountability.
The goal here is to require accountability,
to demand it.
Amy, thousands of people lost their lives
needlessly.
And in their name, we must demand not just
accountability, but more responsible and more
responsive leadership, going forward.
