A woman who went through a grocery store in March, deliberately coughing on produce, was just one of at least three people facing terrorism charges for such actions that involve manipulating people through fear of COVID-19.
However, coughing on cantaloupe is absolutely less of a threat to the nation than the actions that Donald Trump continues to take. In the early phases of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump was so reluctant to admit that there was a problem that he dragged his feet over any action that the United States might take. Then he utterly refused to issue the kind of national social distancing guidelines that have been imposed in every other nation that has seen a significant number of cases. That alone was enough to ensure that the United States has over 700,000 cases of COVID-19 and over 37,000 Americans are dead—by a huge factor, the worst in the world.
In this, as in every other aspect of the job he’s supposed to be doing, Trump has absolutely refused to take even the slightest hint of responsibility. Instead, he’s engaged in the second phase of how Trump handles anything: Finding someone else to blame. And that effort is going to kill thousands more.