Paul Krugman on Monday compared how right-wingers responded to the 2008 financial crash with the way they’re reacting to the coronavirus crisis.
And the Nobel Prize-winning economist found some chilling similarities.
“In 2020 we’re relearning the lessons of 2008 — namely, that America’s right-wingers can’t handle the truth,” Krugman wrote in his latest column for The New York Times, recalling that many conservative politicians and pundits initially ignored and denied the signs pointing to an economic crisis.
Explained Krugman:
The point is that Trump’s luridly delusional response to the coronavirus and his conspiracy theorizing about Democrats and the news media aren’t really that different from the way the right dealt with the financial crisis a dozen years ago. True, last time the crazy talk wasn’t coming directly from the president of the United States. But that’s not the important distinction between then and now. No, what’s different now is that denial and the resulting delay are likely to have deadly consequences.
Krugman also argued on Twitter why he believes that “if you set out to design the worst possible leader for a crisis, it would be Trump.”
Read Krugman’s full editorial here and his tweets below: