Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks
Pres. Donald Trump delivers remarks at the White House Coronavirus Task Force coronavirus update briefing Sunday, March 29, 2020, in the Rose Garden at the White House.
Government medical experts finally succeeded in convincing President Trump to publicly pretend he was exercising presidential leadership to save American lives threatened by a worldwide health pandemic. After claiming for weeks the coronavirus crisis was no big deal, Trump suddenly realized he has a chance to play “a wartime president” on TV heroically leading the nation in battle to defeat America’s “invisible enemy.” How hard could it be to declare victory over an invisible enemy?
Really hard it turned out, causing Trump’s notoriously infinitesimal attention span to kick in. When Trump’s relentless war on the worldwide pandemic dragged on for more than a week, the wartime president was ready to retreat. That’s what led to the most dangerous, irresponsible act of Trump’s presidency.
Trump began publicly threatening to call off all those bothersome recommendations of medical experts for Americans to isolate themselves at home and avoid crowds to protect their lives and slow the spread of the deadly contagion. Trump was eager for everybody to get back to work so he could start falsely taking credit for every increase in the stock market instead of watching it crumble under his presidency. Trump dreamed of seeing every church in America packed again on Easter Sunday.
Christianity Today, the magazine founded by the late Rev. Billy Graham that previously criticized the hypocrisy of evangelical Christians for supporting the “profoundly immoral” Trump presidency, editorialized Trump urging churches to endanger the lives of their congregations on Easter was “not unlike the snake handlers who insisted on playing with poison as proof of their true faith.”
Under widespread criticism, Trump publicly backed off Sunday on prematurely ending government social distancing guidelines with deaths still rapidly escalating. He extended them through April 30, admitting it could be June before recovery was “well underway.”
Death Toll Rises
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Trump could not have chosen a worse week to start encouraging gullible supporters to abandon self-protection. Last Monday, for the first time, the U.S. had 100 COVID-19 deaths in a single day, pushing the death toll past 500 with 30,000 confirmed infections. By Saturday, there were 2,000 total deaths and 120,000 confirmed cases. The surging death toll is now doubling about every two days. Government modeling suggests deaths could ultimately reach 200,000 with infections in the millions.
No one knows where Trump gets his craziest ideas, but his eagerness to send Americans back to work while coronavirus deaths were shooting upwards coincided with conspiracy theories on rightwing websites accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most credible national voice on the pandemic, and other medical experts of secret involvement in a deep-state plot to intentionally destroy the American economy so Trump would be defeated in November.
The pandemic has dramatically exposed Trump’s presidential incompetence and his constant lying to cover it up. Trump simply has no idea how to lead a comprehensive national effort to protect American lives in a real crisis. No previous president from either political party would have ever told governors they were on their own to find enough face masks, respirators and ventilators to keep doctors, health care workers and patients alive in an unprecedented national pandemic devastating the entire health care system.
Trump’s partisan nastiness is on full display when he refuses to call back any governors who criticize his failure to supply basic medical necessities, sneering: “We’re not a shipping clerk.” Meanwhile, health care workers without protective gear in overwhelmed hospitals resort to tying bandannas around their faces and wearing garbage bags.
Governors Protecting the Public
Fortunately, though, it’s America’s governors and the public itself who will prevent Trump from recklessly resuming normal commerce before it’s safe. It was governors of both parties who shut down schools and ordered the closing of almost all but the most essential businesses and most citizens are doing their best to reduce interaction.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who runs a global health foundation, said: “It’s very tough to say to people, ‘Hey, keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner.”
Even some of Trump’s most conservative supporters thought his rush to return to business as usual with a deadly pandemic still raging out of control was insane. “There will be no normally functioning economy,” tweeted Wyoming Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the former vice president’s daughter, “if our hospitals are overwhelmed and thousands of Americans of all ages, including our doctors and nurses, lay dying because we failed to do what’s necessary to stop the virus.”
Major segments of the economy won’t reopen until it’s safe to do so. The multibillion-dollar professional sports industry isn’t about open the baseball season or resume National Basketball Association games if it endangers the lives of their multimillion-dollar athletes and millions of fans.
Trump can rent any sports stadium he wants on Easter Sunday for one of his hate rallies and see how many red-hatted disciples are foolish enough to show up.
