Americans Are Paying the Price for Trump's Failures - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/americans-are-paying-the-price-for-trumps-failures/609532/" That the pandemic occurred is not Trump's fault.
The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump's fault.
The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump's fault.
The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump's fault.
That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump's fault.
Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump's fault too.
Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump's fault again.
The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.
The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is Trump's fault: They did it to protect him.
The false hope of instant cures and nonexistent vaccines is Trump's fault, because he told those lies to cover up his failure to act in time.
The severity of the economic crisis is Trump's fault; things would have been less bad if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities.
The firing of a Navy captain for speaking truthfully about the virus's threat to his crew? Trump's fault.
The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled by mediocrities? Trump's fault.
The insertion of Trump's arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of the national medical supply chain? Trump's fault. ....
Throughout the crisis, the top priority of the president, and of everyone who works for the president, has been the protection of his ego. Americans have become sadly used to Trump's blustery self-praise and his insatiable appetite for flattery. During the pandemic, this psychological deformity has mutated into a deadly strategic vulnerability for the United States.....
As the pandemic kills, as the economic depression tightens its grip, Donald Trump has consistently put his own needs first. Right now, when his only care should be to beat the pandemic, Trump is renegotiating his debts with his bankers and lease payments with Palm Beach County....
He has never tried to be president of the whole United States, but at most 46 percent of it, to the extent that serving even the 46 percent has been consistent with his supreme concerns: stealing, loafing, and whining. Now he is not even serving the 46 percent. The people most victimized by his lies and fantasies are the people who trusted him, the more conservative Americans who harmed themselves to prove their loyalty to Trump. An Arkansas pastor told The Washington Post of congregants "ready to lick the floor" to support the president's claim that there is nothing to worry about. On March 15, the Trump-loyal governor of Oklahoma tweeted a since-deleted photo of himself and his children at a crowded restaurant buffet. "Eating with my kids and all my fellow Oklahomans at the @CollectiveOKC. It's packed tonight!" Those who took their cues from Trump and the media who propagandized for him, and all Americans, will suffer for it." David Frum
Cancel my subscription to the Resurrection
Send my credentials to the House of Detention
I got some friends inside