Friend,

By dismissing coronavirus warnings for months and squandering precious time to prepare, Trump has utterly botched our national response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, Trump is making things worse with every news briefing, spreading lies and overselling false solutions that have led to deaths from people taking unapproved medications.

Sign now: News outlets must stop amplifying Trump’s deadly lies about the coronavirus. People need accurate information during this crisis.

The press should not give Trump a platform for spreading deadly misinformation. Right now, news outlets are spreading Trump’s lies to the general public as if they’re facts. But during this unprecedented crisis, people need accurate information and clear guidance about what they should do right now to stop the spread. Together, we can prevent a worst-case scenario of potentially millions of Americans’ deaths.

Instead, Trump has been sowing confusion and contradicting public health experts from his own administration, including the nation’s top infectious disease expert (Dr. Anthony Fauci) and the U.S. Surgeon General.

Due to Trump’s negligence, people have been dying preventable deaths: Even symptomatic people haven’t been able to get tested (which contributes to the exponential spread of the virus), our frontline healthcare workers don’t have the equipment they need to protect themselves or treat patients, and our healthcare system has been overwhelmed.

Meanwhile, Trump’s continually contradicting statements include lies about the severity and spread of the virus, the capacity for testing, a timeline for a vaccine, whether the outbreak will get worse, and more. Each daily press conference has contradicted the last, but all have minimized the very real threat to people’s lives and worsened the crisis.

Most mainstream news outlets already fact check Trump regularly. Journalists know he’s a serial liar.

With millions of lives on the line, it’s irresponsible to report on Trump’s constantly shifting opinions—which he himself has called mere “hunches” and “feelings”—as if they’re facts.

Sign now: News outlets must stop promoting Trump’s deadly coronavirus propaganda.

Television networks must stop broadcasting Trump’s daily briefings live, as if they’re reliable real-time sources of information. Instead, they should cover the briefings afterward, reporting on what he’s saying with context and facts. Other mainstream outlets must stop running misleading headlines that uncritically parrot Trump’s lies.

Despite having gutted the office in charge of pandemic response and cutting CDC funding, then calling the coronavirus a hoax, Trump has denied any responsibility. He’s spread racist tropes about Asian people and immigrants.

And now, after finally starting to take the virus seriously and advising the public to do the same, he’s backtracking. Right after the CDC began a campaign encouraging people to stay home for at least two weeks, Trump again falsely equated COVID-19 with the flu, to justify lifting the lifesaving and necessary social distancing guidelines that experts recommend.

According to Trump, this is out of a concern for the economy—which will, of course, be hurt if millions of Americans die because Trump ignores health officials’ dire warnings. He’s not only demonstrating selfish incompetence, but staggering cruelty.

And in fact, Trump’s backtracking could be because he’s trying to protect his own profits, which have suffered as the hospitality industry is losing revenue.

Remember: Trump has been violating the U.S. Constitution from day one of his presidency, by refusing to divest from his businesses. That’s one of the reasons I started calling for impeachment so long ago.

Now we’re seeing yet again how dangerous it is for Trump to prioritize his own corrupt self-interests over Americans’ lives.

We have little chance of convincing Trump to step back from the podium and let public health experts handle messaging on the coronavirus—even though that’s what we need. We can, however, push reporters and outlets to cover the crisis responsibly. But we need you to help generate enough public outcry to move the needle.

Sign now to tell news outlets: Stop promoting Trump’s deadly coronavirus propaganda.

Always serving you,

Rashida