Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian
President Donald J. Trump in the Presidential Suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2020.
The latest victims threatened by President Trump’s failure to protect Americans from the coronavirus pandemic now include Donald and Melania Trump themselves and a growing number of the president’s closest advisors. This isn’t the October surprise Trump was hoping for. But no one can say Trump didn’t know what was coming. He was just hoping he could get away with lying to the American people about it until after the presidential election.
Trump told journalist Bob Woodward in early February the coronavirus was “deadly stuff,” far more contagious and catastrophic than the flu. That was right before Trump began dishonestly downplaying the danger to Americans. He’s claimed ever since the disease was totally under control and would soon disappear. More than eight months later, it hasn’t and Trump still has no plan to protect the public. The worst-in-the-world U.S. death toll of 210,000 could double by year’s end as the pandemic and seasonal flu collide, according to medical experts. New infections already are setting records in more than a dozen states including Wisconsin.
The president’s wishful thinking that voters might somehow forget all the misery and death his reckless incompetence has inflicted upon our country came crashing down when the White House itself became the nation’s latest surging coronavirus hot spot.
No Mask For Me!
Just days after Trump once again belittled Joe Biden for following Centers for Disease Control guidelines by wearing a facemask in public, Trump and the first lady tested positive for COVID-19. So did presidential advisors Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway and Chris Christie, three Republican Senators including Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson and other campaign and party officials.
As usual during Trump’s presidency, even the president’s sudden hospitalization with a potentially deadly disease serves a useful political purpose. It helps distract from Trump’s latest self-destructive national embarrassment. This time it was to change the subject from Trump’s disastrous televised debate with Biden less than a week ago.
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Trump wrecked the half-century tradition of presidential debates rendering the entire event nearly unwatchable for 73 million Americans by continually shouting, spewing insults and interrupting Biden from start to finish, making it almost impossible for his opponent to finish a sentence or a thought. No one knew whether Trump needed more medication or less, but he was clearly out of control. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, attempting to serve as moderator, was never able to gain control over the chaotic debate despite repeatedly begging Trump to follow the rules he’d accepted and allow Biden to speak.
Trump Damages the GOP
If Trump thought he benefitted by sabotaging the debate, he was mistaken. After the debate, Michael Murphy, one of many veteran Republican campaign strategists appalled by Trump’s damage to the party, said only Trump’s “most loutish supporters” could possibly have enjoyed his performance. Future moderators, Murphy said, should be armed with either a kill switch for Trump’s microphone or a fire hose.
Biden’s appeal definitely soared in comparison. Biden smiled and tolerated the torrent of personal abuse and lies from Trump for as long as humanly possible before he finally had enough. Biden was speaking for the overwhelming majority of viewers when he said: “Will you shut up, man. This is so unpresidential.” The few instances when Biden was able to speak directly to voters about the stakes of the election were the only coherent moments all night.
Trump’s most threatening response endangering public safety came when Wallace appealed to the president to tell his armed white supremacist supporters who have stoked violence at racial justice demonstrations in Kenosha and Portland to stand down. At Biden’s suggestion, Trump specifically addressed the Proud Boys, an organized neo-Nazi group. Rather than doing anything to reduce the violence, Trump chose his words far more carefully than usual: “Proud Boys — Stand back and stand by! But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left.”
What does that sound like to you? Was the president of the United States telling armed neo-Nazis not to engage in violence or to get ready for it? The latter is how neo-Nazis took it. Before the night was over, the Proud Boys adopted Trump’s charge to them “Stand Back and Stand By” as their slogan and incorporated it into their logo to sell on T-shirts and hoodies. “I still have shivers,” Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, posted the next day. “He (Trump) is telling the people to stand by. As in: Get ready for war.”
The horrors of that debate and contradictions from the White House about the true status of Trump’s illness suggest there may not be any more presidential debates this year. That’s probably fortunate. After everything else he’s put us through this year, the last thing America needs is Trump sending another trigger-happy 17-year-old with an assault rifle into polling places to prevent any “rigged election” that does not declare Trump the winner.
To read more Taking Liberties columns by Joel McNally, click here.
