Wouldn’t it be cool if President Trump weren’t an
idiot*? We face a health crisis that we should have seen coming many weeks ago,
and, as yet, the White House has not taken adequate measures to confront it.
Of course, Trump hasn’t been oblivious to some of
the effects of the coronavirus, at least where the stock market is concerned.
Since he regards the Dow Industrial Average as his personal report card, he has
thrashed about looking for a way to pull it back up from the 20% dive it has
recently taken. Where Wall Street is concerned, he cares, he really cares.
But, as Hawaii’s Senator Mazie Hirono declared,
our focus should be on the health of our citizens and on the economic pain to
be faced by millions of soon-to-be displaced workers. Trump apparently doesn’t
see these as key concerns. He has said nothing reassuring about the financial
stress of ordinary Americans who don’t buy stocks. And, though we desperately
need much more testing for the coronavirus, his Oval Office speech barely
referred to testing at all. His promise last week that everyone who wants to be
tested can be tested was empty, as was his claim that “millions” of test kits
are now available. As of today the number of Americans tested stood at
about 11,000.
South Korea, in the meantime, is testing
approximately 10,000 people per day. Why are we so far behind the Koreans?
Maybe it’s time for us to ask for some help from our friends in East Asia.
Trump, of course, would never accept help from a foreign
country. His speech last night suggested that keeping foreigners out of the
U.S. was an important factor in controlling the spread of COVID-19. It is not. He
even at one point referred to the coronavirus as a “foreign” virus. This obviously
does not reflect reality, but simply shows Trump’s deeply weird notion that non-American
people are inherently a threat, an idea promoted by his deeply weird advisor,
Stephen Miller. The presence of the creepily incompetent Stephen Miller in the
White House is a reflection of Trump’s well-known preference for suck-ups over
experts. So, we now face a life-threatening crisis with our leadership in the
hands of people whose qualifications amount to nothing more than a willingness
to suck up to Donald Trump, and a president who can neither think straight nor
talk straight.
Hang on, America. It’s going to be a bumpy year.
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* To those who object to my rather harsh phrasing
here, let me cite the words of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who
labeled Trump “a fucking moron.” I believe I have, by comparison, shown
appropriate restraint.
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