Atlas Coughed
During Wednesday evening’s vice-presidential debate, as he refused to acknowledge that climate change is an existential threat and to agree that he would accept the results of the upcoming presidential election and to elaborate on the Trump administration’s alleged plan to ensure that Americans will continue to have health care during a raging pandemic, Vice President Mike Pence uttered the following line to Kamala Harris: “Stop playing politics with people’s lives.”
The wrongness of the comment was made even more acute by the events that followed the debate: After the event concluded, Pence was joined on the stage—outfitted with plexiglass, in weak acknowledgment of the fact that politics is people’s lives—by his wife, Karen. She was pointedly not wearing a mask. Pence then posed for pictures with fellow Republicans. None of them wore a mask.
“Shocking but not surprising” has been a constant refrain of the Trump
