Wartime President

Well it’s taken less than 15 days for Trump to get sick of dealing with the virus. The daily briefings are starting late and rambling on for two hours. Much of these briefings are Trump or Pence saying what a great job Trump and his administration are doing in dealing with the outbreak. Everyone noticed that America’s Doctor, Anthony Fauci the country’s leading expert on infectious diseases, was not at yesterday’s briefing. There is reporting now that Trump may be losing patience with Fauci politely pushing back with scientific facts when Trump talks nonsense about the virus and how to contain it. When asked where Fauci was yesterday, Trump said he was just in a meeting with him. Fauci may be happy he wasn’t there. He has said he’s asked the White House more than once to stop the unhealthy optics of the people supposedly in charge of breaking the cardinal rule of social distancing. They all stand shoulder to shoulder at the podium telling the rest of us to stay away from each other.

Trump is now feeling the pressure of the economy in free fall. We know he doesn’t like to take blame or responsibility for any problem or mistake. Now the thing he cares about most, getting re-elected based on a strong economy, is in serious trouble. We would have been better prepared had he acted on all the obvious early warning signs of the coronavirus outbreak, instead of dismissing it. We may have been able to lessen the economic pain of people losing jobs, businesses threatened with failure and the stock market plunging. Trump is now desperate. He’s backed into a corner. The economy is teetering. Some conservative economists are saying the government has gone too far. They are pushing to start re-opening business sooner rather than later. Others are saying going back to work too soon will cause greater economic distress if more workers get sick. The medical experts keep saying this isn’t going to be over by next week. Trump’s answer, “America will again and soon, be open for business. Very soon. A lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting. Lot sooner. We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.” Remember, Trump’s default position when faced with a problem is blame others and say what a great job he’s doing.

The real leaders have been governors around the country who have stepped up and taken the drastic action of locking down their states and telling people the truth. Oh, and let’s not forget congress that’s having trouble stepping up. They have been working on a nearly two trillion dollar rescue bill for days. They put off a vote twice promising again to vote today. They are fighting over how much money to give big corporations and how they will be held accountable. Rome is burning and they are fiddling. Figure it out.

This is all a glaring lack of national leadership. Trump calls himself a “wartime president”. Wartime president don’t tell governors to go out and see how many ventilators they can buy. That they can get them faster than the federal government can. A wartime president doesn’t say he doesn’t take responsibility for the dismissal of an expert on his National Security Council two years ago whose job it was to plan for pandemics. A wartime president doesn’t belittle reporters when they ask legitimate questions that challenge his leadership. I remember thinking after Trump was elected,  he was incompetent and dangerous. He’s repeatedly proven the first. Now that we are at war, he is proving the second.