Donald Trump speaks to reporters separated by social distancing, April 2020
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) emergency could have been a shining moment for Donald Trump. American voters really only need two things from their president in a major crisis: First, they need unity. Second, they need competence. Unfortunately, Trump has been unable to display either one.
Trump has utterly failed to unify America. Recall George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, standing on a pile of rubble at “Ground Zero” that, just three days earlier, had been the World Trade Center, telling the American people:
I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people – and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.
For a short time, at least, the country was unified, and Bush’s approval rating was a sky-high 90 percent (until he misused such unity, for example, to start an unrelated, disastrous war in Iraq).
Likewise, Bill Clinton gave us comforting words of unity after the 1995 domestic terrorist attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, in both a speech immediately after the attack and a separate memorial prayer service four days later. Barack Obama also provided a unifying message of strength in announcing that U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, after which crowds of young people gathered outside the White House to cheer President Obama’s action.
In contrast, Trump immediately defaulted to division instead of unity in the face of the Coronavirus. He attacked and continues to attack reporters who ask basic questions about his government’s COVID-19 response. This behavior should not be surprising from Trump, who began his presidential campaign with an extremely divisive speech, talking about putting up a southern border wall to stop immigrants who Trump said are “bringing drugs, … bringing crime” and who are “rapists.” Likewise, Trump attacks Democratic-run states, such as California and New York, which have taken serious “stay at home” steps in response to their large number of Coronavirus cases. And in a truly divisive move, the Trump White House has stolen or “blockaded” critical protective equipment such as masks from states and hospitals.
Likewise, Trump failed the Coronavirus competency test. Specifically, Trump fired the National Security Council’s pandemic response team in 2018, waited too long to respond to COVID-19, called the virus a “hoax,” and kept downplaying its severity, even as the number of cases and deaths mounted (now over 1.2 million cases and 71,000 deaths, and still climbing). The low point was certainly Trump’s recent “Coronavirus Clorox” moment, where Trump dangerously suggested that Americans could “inject” disinfectant into their bodies to fight COVID-19. Not only was Trump widely mocked for this, but serious people from Joe Biden to physicians to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) publicly had to ask Americans to not drink bleach or ingest disinfectants. Not surprisingly, however, there were recent reports of increased poisonous ingestion of bleach and other disinfectants across the country. After this failure, Trump stopped showing up at the White House daily Coronavirus briefings. Incredibly, the Trump administration plans to dismantle (now, under pressure, Trump says “refocus”) its Coronavirus task force. Meanwhile, Trump whines about “reopening the country” while COVID-19 testing still lags and the death toll climbs.
But the political damage has been done. Trump’s approval numbers on handling the Coronavirus crisis are dropping. Many recent polls, whether nationwide or in “battleground” states, show Trump behind Joe Biden. And Trump’s media stunts, such as appearing at briefings to rant and rave, or looking tiny next to Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, have fallen flat or worse.
Trump now calls himself a “wartime president.” But unlike many other presidents in times of great national peril, Trump has shown himself to be both unprepared and unpatriotic.
Photo by Ninian Reid, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/HqxTrK
