Trump’s refusal to use all the powers of his office and government to confront the worst internal threat since World War II is seen as more negligent, callous, and politically self-destructive with each day devastated by the virus.
This week, as states like Florida, Texas, and Arizona set records for coronavirus infections, and intensive care units and morgues filled up, it has exposed the deliberate blindness of a White House that appears to be sealed from the reality of the pandemic.
“We believe this president has great approval in this country. His historic Covid response speaks for itself,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Thursday, encapsulating the strange parallel universe of an administration that considers one of the most disastrous government failures of modernity. age is a great political success.
McEnany on Thursday praised American testing and the push for vaccines and therapies, which have as much to do with innovation in the American pharmaceutical industry as anything Trump has done. The United States still lacks a national testing and tracking program, still cannot adequately equip all medical workers with protective equipment, and is seriously losing the virus five months after the fight.
His aides celebrate his decision to stop travel to some Chinese travelers and to prioritize fan manufacturing for months. Such steps were important, but in retrospect they have been less significant than they appeared at the time. More importantly, they are doing little to quell the vicious resurgence of the virus in most of the country. And boasting about fans seems perverse when thousands of Americans die anyway.
“The president has made so many bad executive decisions,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said Thursday.
“Observing his behavior, I have concluded that he is like the man who refuses to ask for directions. All the answers are there. Scientists have the answers. We know that testing, tracing, treatment, distancing, masking, and sanitation They can stop the spread of this virus, and yet the President continues down the wrong path and refuses to ask the scientists who know better than any of us for instructions.
The United States follows its peers in the fight against the virus
The disaster in the United States is perhaps best expressed in comparison to other industrialized nations. States like South Korea stifled the virus with aggressive measures while Trump continued to deny his threat. France and Italy suffered terribly, but science-based blockades remained in place until the pathogen was suppressed, unlike Trump’s premature state openings, they worked. Aggressive foreign governments from Australia to Hong Kong and Germany are now launching outbreaks in an attempt to prevent a major resurgence.
Another Trump acolyte, Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, issued an executive order Wednesday night blocking Peach State cities from issuing orders requiring the use of masks in public places, a proven measure to decrease transmission of the virus, and on Thursday he sued Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms for following his city’s mask order.
“How can you not shake your head, right? Over 3 million cases, over 135,000 deaths, preventable deaths here in the United States,” said Dr. Ali Khan, dean of the Medical Center School of Public Health from the University of Nebraska. CNN’s “New Day” on Thursday. “And we are the only atypical case among all our peer countries. All of Europe has contained its disease. And many parts of the world have not only contained it, they have eliminated the disease.”
The President, however, looked away from this worsening calamity and international shame. He rarely mentions the virus in public, unless it is to deny its dire reality. The president never appears with his public health officials and gives the impression that he has moved on. On Thursday, he brought together Cabinet members and Republican lawmakers at the White House to celebrate the eradication of more “regulations to kill jobs.”
“We did it so that dishwashers now have a lot more water and in many places, in most places in the country, water is not a problem, they don’t know what to do with it. It’s called rain. They don’t have a problem,” Trump said, at an event where several guests were called into the microphone by genuflective Vice President Mike Pence to pay tribute to his “leadership.”
Trump’s event came a day after he flew to Atlanta, one of coronavirus hot spots, not for emergency brainstorming sessions at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but for an event about transportation projects.
With the country on its knees due to the virus, which is now increasing in 39 states, the White House is filling Trump day with the kind of incremental low-power events meant to highlight a typical agenda of the times when presidents stay without political influence.
“He is doing many things at once,” he said. “That’s the good thing about the Trump administration,” said McEnany.
‘We expect more’
The staggering negligence of the White House and the apparent forgetfulness of the tragedy unfolding under Trump’s supervision are notable, as there now seems to be little expectation from governors or public health experts that the leadership will protect Americans. : the fundamental duty of a president during a national crisis – will always be forthcoming.
“Trump soon disappointed us with that expectation.”
The administration’s push to open full-time schools has become an emblem this week of its myopia and the way local and state officials are making decisions, in this case preparing only for online classes, which ignore the Trump’s claims that they are clearly more motivated by their own political requirements than concern about security.
McEnany said that scientific research showed that children were much less likely to become infected with the coronavirus and have serious complications, so schools should reopen. But his point ignores serious concerns that teachers, administrative staff, and ancillary workers, such as custodians and security guards in close contact with children, may be at high risk for illness in confined spaces. And while children may not get sick, they can infect older and more vulnerable relatives in the home.
“Everyone else in the western world, our peer nations, is doing it. We are the outliers here,” McEnany said, ignoring the obvious point that the rest of the western world benefits from the leaders who controlled the pandemic.
“Science should not get in the way of this,” he said, in a comment that sums up Trump’s entire failed approach to the crisis.
.
