Tag Archives: Coronavirus

2020 General Election, Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans

The Trump Roadshow pretends there is no raging pandemic and no rising death toll

Donald Trump is on the move. Tulsa. Phoenix. And coming soon to Mount Rushmore, where he will celebrate the 4th.

Meanwhile, the number of new coronavirus infections reported across the U.S. yesterday — 38,115 — was a record high since the start of the pandemic. The number of infections in this country totals more than 2.3 million and the death toll exceeds 119,000. I recommend the interactive feature in this morning’s New York Times, which illustrates in vivid animation the relentless spread of this virus.

“Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count,” June 25, 2020 New York Times.

In March, the President, failing to apprehend the reference to Nero fiddling while Rome burned, retweeted a cartoon image of himself playing the violin.

Ignoring the pandemic; willfully refusing to do anything to tame it (except for persistent wishing); pretending that if we just all go back to work and out to shop, all will be well — this is hardly a promising reelection strategy. But that seems to be Trump’s game plan. And, by all accounts, that — winning reelection, not defeating the coronavirus — is Trump’s fixation.

That’s a remarkable testament to Trump’s intellectual incapacity, moral depravity, and unfitness for the office he holds.

More significant than a stupid, self-defeating strategy is that people continue to die. Tens of thousands who didn’t have to die. This is a national tragedy as a result of a monumental failure of leadership. We can see this clearly in the contrast between the U.S. and the European Union. The EU has begun to tame this virus; we haven’t. It’s getting worse here.

Meet the Press, June 21, 2020.

Trump is incapable — relying on his gut and his small, threadbare bag of tricks — of defeating the coronavirus. So, having failed to wish it away, he ignores it.

Here’s what’s even more significant: The contemporary Republican Party is complicit in this ongoing catastrophe. Republican leaders have made a deal in getting behind Trump, and standing behind him come what may.

The failures of Trump’s tenure in the White House are clearly visible. The consequences can’t be hidden or wished away. And among the national Republican leadership, there are plenty of men and women who see well enough what is going on.

And they’re going along with this. They stick with Trump no matter what the consequences. No matter how many hundreds of thousands of Americans get infected needlessly, and no matter how many tens of thousands of Americans die as a result of Trump’s failures — they stick with him. They have freely entered into a pact that they are unwilling to break.

They made a cold, hard calculation to follow Trump because it kept them in power, gave them tax cuts, shredded regulations, and allowed them to stack the federal courts with right-wing ideologues. And the fact that their bargain has brought pain and suffering and death in numbers that are stomach turning — that, in their minds, doesn’t outweigh the political benefits of the deal.

There is so much that is indecent about this President. There’s so much to be distressed and angry about. Day after day, the cases of coronavirus increase and the death toll mounts. It’s disheartening and infuriating and disturbing to watch senators, members of Congress and the cabinet, advisors in the White House — the whole lot of defenders and apologists for Trump — accept the sickness, the pain and suffering, and the deaths of Americans because, in their minds, what they’ve gained outweighs the devastation that their political bargain has brought to the rest of the country.

(Image: Mount Rushmore in the fog, National Park Service.)

Democrats, Donald Trump, Republicans

Why is the United States, with 4% of the world’s population, #1 — at 25% –in COVID-19 cases?

Chuck Todd interviews Dr. Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

Todd: President Trump’s Tulsa rally came one day after the United States recorded the most new cases of COVID-19 since May 3. And at a point when, according to Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. is doing a far worse job of controlling the pandemic than the European Union is doing – basically similar size, if you will. Look at that graph. . . .

Dr. Osterholm, welcome back…. How do you explain that the United States have 25% of the globe’s cases and we’re sadly number one with the rocket ship? …

Osterholm: … At this point we don’t really have a national plan that really puts together what we’re trying to do. We have 50 different states, the District of Columbia, the territories – all kind of with their own plan. And you’ve seen in the past week how disjointed that is.

What are we trying to do? We’re at 70-percent of the number of cases today that we were at the very height of the pandemic cases in early April. And yet I don’t see any kind of a – This is where we need to go and this is what we need to do to get there kind of effort. And that’s one of our challenges.

Todd: Is this a failure of testing and tracing – is that where this failure is? Or is this just across the board?

Osterholm: Well, we have to understand, as I’ve said to you on multiple occasions, We’re not driving this Tiger, we’re riding it. And while other areas have done much better around the world in stopping it after a difficult period of time with it, we haven’t done that.

And part of that is the fact that we have not really, I think, gotten the message across to the public yet that this is a very serious issue; that we can’t shut down our economy, but we just can’t suddenly say, We’re done with it.

This virus is operating on its own time, under its own rules, not anything we impose on it. And we’re now trying to act like somehow we can policy-wise impose our will on this virus. And that’s what’s happened.

Other countries have been much more aware of the fact that the virus is going to do what it’s going to do. And so you have to basically stay locked down. You have to limit transmission in areas that we’re not doing. And that’s why I think you’re seeing right now is increases in a number of states, because everybody’s back to a pre-pandemic mindset.

Dr. Osterholm: “… we have not really, I think, gotten the message across to the public yet that this is a very serious issue.”

The Messenger in Chief, of course, is Donald Trump. And that is not the message that he is communicating. So, it is Republicans, who look to him as their leader, who are least likely to have gotten the message.

Consider one aspect of the public health message that the public hasn’t gotten — wearing masks to prevent the spread of the virus and protect other people. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that

Democrats are almost twice as likely as Republicans (70% v. 37%) to say they wear a mask “every time” they leave their house and while most people (72%) think President Trump should wear a mask when meeting with other people, only about half of Republicans (48%) agree. The partisan difference in opinion and behavior regarding masks is largely driven by Republican men. About half of Republican men report wearing a protective mask at least most of the time when leaving their house to go someplace where they may come into contact with others (49%) and smaller shares say President Trump should wear a mask when meeting with other people (43%).

Trump’s policy on the coronavirus is denial. And numbers make the President look bad. In Tulsa, the President said, “When you do testing to that extent you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’ They test and they test. We got tests for people who don’t know what’s going on.”

White House officials insisted that Trump was only kidding. But when asked on Tuesday about his comments, Trump replied, “I don’t kid.”

And there is evidence to back up Trump’s serious intent: “The Trump administration is planning to end federal support for some coronavirus testing sites across the nation at the end of the month — including seven in Texas, where confirmed cases of COVID are spiking.”

As a campaign strategy denial doesn’t look very promising, but that, clearly, is the strategy the Trump campaign is running with now. Trump said in February, “It’s going to disappear.” Trump told Sean Hannity last week, “It’s going to fade away.”

Trump’s most fervent followers, especially Republican men, are ready, willing, and able to accept the President’s wishful thinking.

The policy of wishful thinking is the reason the United States is Number 1 in the world in coronavirus infections and deaths. It is the reason that the coronavirus is not going to disappear. The virus will “operate on its own time, under its own rules.” And Donald Trump refuses to do anything to stop it.

Donald Trump, Off the Rails

No plan to defeat the coronavirus; Trump casts shade on testing; White House veers and cheers

“We don’t have a single point of leadership for this response, and we don’t have a master plan for this response.” — Rick Bright

“We have greatest testing in the world. We have the most cases than anybody in the world – but why? Because we do more testing. When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases.” — Donald Trump

“We had left a playbook and it was easy to tell that’s what it was, because it said on the front in big red letters, Playbook, and then it had all those steps you needed to take. Sixty-nine pages of steps of what to do when a pandemic loomed.

…First everyone said no such document existed. Now today the White House press secretary came out and said: Well, there was this document, but it wasn’t really that good. And we had our own document … – which contradicts the fact that the Trump position till now has been: Well, no one saw this coming.

Now the position is: Well, we saw it coming. We rejected the Obama playbook. We had our own playbook. Our playbook was better.

… The only thing that’s consistent in the excuse making from the White House.” — Ron Klain

“There’s never been a vaccine project anywhere in history like this. And I just want to make something clear. It’s very important. Vaccine or no vaccine, we’re back.” — Donald Trump

More than 88,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. And the dying hasn’t stopped.

(Image: Kayleigh McEney, holding the Obama administration’s Playbook, while celebrating the disastrous response of the Trump administration to the pandemic.)

Donald Trump, Off the Rails

Donald Trump has no plan to defeat the novel coronavirus and doesn’t intend to make a plan

It is May 7, 2020, three months after the first American death from the novel coronavirus. More than 76,000 Americans have died since then.  Yet the Trump administration has no plan to keep us safe. Instead, it is focused on revving up economic activity, while acknowledging that infections and deaths from coronavirus will continue to increase as a result.

On Tuesday Andy Slavitt, former Acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (during the last two years of the Obama administration), offered observations about this rush to reopen the country, which put things into a clear, well-grounded perspective:

The truth is we`ve done a very good job over the last couple of months staying inside, slowing down the infection rate. That has saved people`s lives. But nothing`s happened to the virus in the meantime. There was no magic act where that virus became less infectious. And so as soon as we go outside again and start interacting more, if we`re not testing and tracing and wearing masks and taking really profound steps, then the infection rate`s just going to grow again dramatically. And where we sit today is much, much higher than every other country in the world.

Without testing, tracing, PPE, and social distancing, the situation will grow dramatically worse. And we lead the world with the highest rate of infection.

Slavitt argued against the simplistic view that we must put aside concerns with public health for the sake of the American economy, since:

… we`re not choosing between either a good economy or fewer deaths. The truth is that for us to have a better economy, we have to fix the public health crisis. Nobody`s going to start spending money at stores, buying cars, investing in small businesses, signing leases until they feel this crisis is behind us.

The Lieutenant Governor of Texas says, “there are more important things than living. And that’s saving this country for my children and my grandchildren and saving this country for all of us.” Like Donald Trump and Mike Pence, though, he is far from the assembly lines at meatpacking plants, checking out customers at the local supermarket, attending to sick patients in an ICU, or anywhere else where the risks are especially high.

Slavitt noted we are still learning about the virus:

But we know it`s a novel virus. We know none of us have immunity. At best there may be a couple percent of the population that have gained immunity. We know that it infects people and keeps – and while it infects them they`re asymptomatic, or a good bit of the time, if not the entire time. And so it goes from person to person until it finds a host where it can become lethal. And it takes just a small speck through the air for that to happen. And if it gets into a nursing home or a meatpacking factory or a prison or a public housing unit or any place where people congregate and multiple generations live, it can wipe out large communities.

And so we`re seeing death tolls now on a daily basis that are soon to approach the number of people that died on 9/11. Continually. We have to ask ourselves how we reverse course from where we are – and we can. But we can`t if we don`t admit the facts, if we don`t face the facts.

Guys with guns in Lansing.

Slavitt suggested – contra those urging us to accept a higher death count in return for a humming economy, or those guys with guns in Lansing, Michigan, or the crowds clamoring to reopen the beaches – most of us want to protect ourselves and our families from harm [my emphasis]:

… I think that people want to be safe first. I think they want – we all want our lives back. But people don`t want to endanger their selves or their families. They don`t want to endanger others. I actually think that a lot of this, “economy opening” – yes, there are scenes of people at beaches on TV, and yes there`s scenes of people rallying with guns, but the lion’s share of people, I think, want a plan to open up the country safely. And that is not too much to ask. Germany has done it. Japan has done it. New Zealand has done it. I mean, this is not impossible. We just want to open up safely. And safely means we have to do things. We have to have testing and tracing in place. We have to have masks in place. The Czech Republic has done it. Greece has done it. Italy is doing it. Why are we the country that decides we`re going to open up unsafely?

Why have we given up defeating the coronavirus and decided to sacrifice tens of thousands of Americans whose lives need not be shortened by this pandemic?

Because doing things – conducting widespread testing and tracing, providing PPE to our medical personnel, giving the public clear guidance at each phase – would require leadership at the federal level: a strategic plan and energetic executive action. And the Trump administration doesn’t have a plan, much less the will or the capacity to carry out a plan.

Virtually every public health authority has put testing at the center of a strategy to defeat the virus and protect American lives. Why not focus on doing this – to achieve the victory? Because, increased testing would increase the number of identified cases of infection, and that would make Trump’s numbers look bad. As he put it yesterday, “The media likes to say we have the most cases, but we do by far the most testing. If we did very little testing, we wouldn’t have the most cases. So in a way by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad.”

A month ago – on April 5 – David Wallace-Wells (“There Is No Plan for the End of the Coronavirus Crisis”) noted that testing and tracing was the ideal path to containing the pandemic, and that, in the absence of tracing, an aggressive testing program could lead to success. The country’s lockdown provided the opportunity to implement a plan:

buying the country time to ramp up a comprehensive testing regimen. We would shelter in place until such a program was ready to go, then reenter “normal” life through that portal of medical surveillance.

Sadly, he added: “the complete absence of federal leadership … is especially conspicuous.”

Today, as infections and deaths mount, the federal government continues to abdicate its responsibility to protect us.

Jay Rosen has concluded (“The plan is to have no plan”):

The plan is to have no plan, to let daily deaths between one and three thousand become a normal thing, and then to create massive confusion about who is responsible— by telling the governors they’re in charge without doing what only the federal government can do, by fighting with the press when it shows up to be briefed, by fixing blame for the virus on China or some other foreign element, and by “flooding the zone with shit,” Steve Bannon’s phrase for overwhelming the system with disinformation, distraction, and denial, which boosts what economists call “search costs” for reliable intelligence. 

Stated another way, the plan is to default on public problem solving, and then prevent the public from understanding the consequences of that default.

On April 5, I wrote, “Accountability is anathema to Donald Trump. Between now and November 3, he will frantically flee from even a modicum of responsibility for the tens of thousands of deaths from coronavirus that will continue to take place on his watch.”

Donald Trump hasn’t succeeded — or even tried with any conviction — to defeat this virus. He continues, however, to muddy the waters (“flooding the zone with shit”) to escape blame for the carnage.

(Image: U.S. Department of State.)

The Way the World Goes 'Round

That’s the way the world goes ’round: news, context, and comments on the past week

1.

2. Wisconsin Republicans refused to let a deadly pandemic (with the greatest impact in Democratic strongholds in Milwaukee) get in the way of guaranteeing a low-turnout election for a state supreme court seat. Speaker of the Assembly Robin Vos, outfitted in head to toe PPE, assures the public that everything is fine.

3. Charles Sykes – who for twenty five years was immersed in the “conservative movement, both as an observer and as a full participant” and knows all the Republican players, including Robin Vos – explains the election’s significance and the context in Wisconsin politics. (I recommend Sykes’ book, How the Right Lost Its Mind, which presents an insiders’ account of how conservative media “succeeded in convincing our audiences to ignore and discount any information whatsoever from the mainstream media. The cumulative effect of the attacks was to delegitimize those outlets and essentially destroy much of the Right’s immunity to false information.”)

4. Richard Hasen (“How Republicans are using the pandemic to suppress the vote“) suggests that Republicans may be willing to go to far greater lengths than they did in Wisconsin to rig the November election. He foresees two possibilities. The first (a 180-degree pivot from Wisconsin Republicans), is to emphasize the grave risks to public health and simply close polling places in Democratic cities and swing states. (Shutting down polling places – creating voting deserts, in effect – in Democratic areas of a state is a tried and true method of voter suppression.) The second method is more novel: a direct assault on the right of citizens to cast votes.

More ominously, as Mark Joseph Stern has pointed out, state legislatures have the power under the Constitution to choose presidential electors. In its infamous 2000 decision in Bush vs. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court remarked that although every state legislature had given voters the power to vote directly for the president and to allocate the state’s electoral college votes, state legislators could take back that power at any time.

What’s to stop Trump from appealing to Republican-controlled legislatures in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to take back this power from voters under the pretext that the risk of COVID-19 makes voting too difficult? Although all these states, except Arizona, have Democratic governors, some believe that the legislatures could take back this power even without the agreement of the governor. [My emphasis.]

5. The United States now leads the world in coronavirus deaths. The lack of national leadership that brought this about is disgraceful.

6. Today’s New York Times offers the most recent review of Donald Trump’s ongoing failures to protect the American public (“He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus”).

By the last week of February, it was clear to the administration’s public health team that schools and businesses in hot spots would have to close. But in the turbulence of the Trump White House, it took three more weeks to persuade the president that failure to act quickly to control the spread of the virus would have dire consequences.

7. Last month Trump declared, “We’re not a shipping clerk,” but the continuing refusal of the federal government to take command is costing lives. Instead, his administration has relied on five large medical supply companies to step into the breach. These companies are distributing personal protective equipment — but their regular customers are getting first dibs on all PPE, regardless of need. Governors with coronavirus hotspots have to stand in line while scrambling to find their own sources for gear.

Admiral John Polowczyk, who leads FEMA’s Procurement Task Force, explains: “I’m not here to disrupt a supply chain, say, look, they have trucks to go to the hospital door every day. We’re bringing product in. They’re filling orders for hospitals, nursing homes like normal.”

But things are hardly normal. As a result, according to governors with hospitals that lack PPE, “this has led to confusion and chaotic bidding wars. Until the bottleneck is sorted out, it will be market forces and corporations that often decide who gets scarce supplies and who doesn’t.”

(Image: courtesy of NASA.)

Donald Trump, Off the Rails

One constant in Trump’s erratic vacillation: A furious flight from accountability

Accountability is anathema to Donald Trump. Between now and November 3, he will frantically flee from even a modicum of responsibility for the tens of thousands of deaths from coronavirus that will continue to take place on his watch. Fox News Channel, with the rest of the conservative media universe, the White House, the Trump campaign, and every Republican official in Washington will pull out all the stops to prevent Trump from being called into account for the ongoing disaster he is presiding over.

The President’s dithering, fabrications, and missteps have aggravated the public health calamity:

The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan. 3. Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus — the first of many — in the President’s Daily Brief.

And yet, it took 70 days from that initial notification for Trump to treat the coronavirus not as a distant threat or harmless flu strain well under control, but as a lethal force that had outflanked America’s defenses and was poised to kill tens of thousands of citizens. That more-than-two-month stretch now stands as critical time that was squandered. the coronavirus

Trump’s baseless assertions in those weeks, including his claim that it would all just “miraculously” go away, sowed significant public confusion and contradicted the urgent messages of public health experts.

As the pandemic spread around the globe and deep into our country, Donald Trump denied and diminished the grave threat to Americans. Jeremy Peters reports on how conservative media amplified, and sometimes inspired, Trump’s tall tales. This is part of Job #1 – venerating Donald Trump and impugning his critics – for Fox News Channel, conservative talk radio, et al. (Accurate information isn’t a priority.)

Peters describes a four step process: blame China (while sometimes adding conspiracy theories to the tales told); play down the risks (just as Donald Trump did for weeks and weeks, until his turn on March 16—though he still shifts back to denial); share ‘survivor’ stories (coronavirus is really no worse than a “bad cold”); and then, when the infection rate and the body count make denial impossible to sustain, pivot and blame the left: the President is a victim of his political enemies.

The pervasiveness of the denial among many of Mr. Trump’s followers from early in the outbreak, and their sharp pivot to finding fault with an old foe once the crisis deepened, is a pattern that one expert in the spread of misinformation said resembled a textbook propaganda campaign.

As the rightwing echo chamber swerves from one fable to the next, yesterday’s account is forgotten. (We’ve always been at war with Eurasia.) Consistency and coherence, truth and facts, don’t matter. But the shifting narratives have this in common: they stoke a fundamental partisan divide. It’s us vs. them. Trump and his conservative base vs. Democrats/liberals/the left, that is to say, the enemies of America.

Peters references Rush Limbaugh’s denunciation of the Four Corners of Deceit (government, academia, science, and the media), which – as it happens – are sources of information independent of the right’s narrative of the day (whatever that happens to be). Limbaugh, with a bigger audience than FNC, deserves a gold star (to go along with his Presidential Medal of Freedom) for yeoman service to the misinformation campaign on behalf of Donald Trump.

Limbaugh, February 24: “Folks, this coronavirus thing, I want to try to put this in perspective for you. It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. You think I’m wrong about this? You think I’m missing it by saying that’s — Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”

And March 27: “We didn’t elect a president to defer to a bunch of health experts that we don’t know. And how do we know they’re even health experts? Well, they wear white lab coats, and they’ve been in the job for a while, and they’re at the CDC and they’re at the NIH, and they’re up, well — yeah, they’ve been there, and they are there. But has there been any job assessment for them? They’re just assumed to be the best because they’re in government. But, these are all kinds of things that I’ve been questioning.”

The duplicity, the conspiracy theories, the eagerness to play the victim: the charade is over the top because the failure is catastrophic. Donald Trump, who doesn’t focus much beyond the next news cycle, has abdicated a leadership role in this crisis (though he relishes his time on center stage at the daily coronavirus briefings). I noted last month that the United States had no national strategy for combating the coronavirus. It still doesn’t, because President Trump insists that the nation’s governors are responsible for protecting the public, while the federal government will play only a “backup” role.

“Massive amounts of medical supplies, even hospitals and medical centers, are being delivered directly to states and hospitals by the Federal Government. Some have insatiable appetites & are never satisfied (politics?). Remember, we are a backup for them….”

The coronavirus is a national threat, which doesn’t recognize state boundaries. Containment – to be effective – can’t be a patchwork. It makes little sense to fob off responsibility to 50 state governors, who are placed in a position of outbidding each other, and FEMA, for test kits, personal protective equipment, ventilators, and other scarce equipment, as the infection spreads throughout the country. The President of the United States, who possesses authority and commands resources beyond the reach of any governor, could – if he chose – take charge. But he doesn’t.

“Remember, we are a backup for them.”

Doctors, scientists, public health experts, including senior officials in past administrations of both parties, agree that the Trump administration’s disavowal of responsibility will cost thousands of American lives. The failures are ongoing, increasing the death toll (“Trump administration’s lack of a unified coronavirus strategy will cost lives, say a dozen experts”):

The Trump administration has declined to nationalize the medical logistics system and hasn’t executed a national testing strategy. Although the president likely lacks the legal authority to impose a national stay-at-home order, he has declined to urge each governor to do so. Seven states haven’t imposed one, including Texas.

The results are clear: Governors and doctors report critical shortages of gear, it remains very difficult to get tested for the virus, and some Americans still aren’t heeding guidance to keep away from others.

That NBC report references an editorial this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, “Ten Weeks to Crush the Curve,” proposing a strategy for eradicating the coronavirus in a “forceful, focused campaign.” Donald Trump has declared himself a “wartime president” battling an “invisible enemy.” NEJM insists, “It’s a war we should fight to win.” The first step, the step that only a president can take: “Establish unified command.”

This country has never had a Commander in Chief in wartime who deferred to states and localities for leadership. Our erratic, irresolute president can’t settle on a strategy for more than a few hours. This makes little sense, though it is a means to distance Trump from the consequences of COVID-19. It facilitates a dodge of responsibility.

More troubling, Trump’s three years of misrule have undermined the administration’s capacity for effective action. He has hollowed out the executive branch, traded competence for sycophancy, and enfeebled the federal government.

Susan Glasser tells the story in the New Yorker:

“When you are done being angry about all the crazy, nasty, inconsistent, and untrue things that Donald Trump says each day about the coronavirus and other matters, remember that the flood of words is cover for an Administration that in some ways barely exists relative to its predecessors, especially when it comes to crucial areas of domestic, economic, and international security—or even straightforward crisis management. Turnover at the upper levels of Trump’s White House stands at eighty-three per cent, according to a Brookings Institution tracker. In his Cabinet, Trump has had far more turnover than Presidents Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, and both George Bushes. The capacity of the federal government to respond to this catastrophe—even if Trump had been so inclined—has never been weaker. The virus was not of Trump’s making, but his government’s incoherent, disorganized response to it was utterly predictable.” [My emphasis.]

It is not just the White House that has lost capacity. Vacancies in the Treasury Department have already begun to impair administration economic policy. And, as Jonathan Bernstein suggests, Trump’s economic policies are already shaky:

Trump … likes the idea of big, unprecedented action, which is a perfect match for the current situation. But in three-plus years, he still doesn’t appear have any idea how the government works, what he’s supposed to do to make things happen, or anything about the economy outside of how it affects him personally.

Donald Trump’s shortcomings have been evident for all to see throughout the past three-plus years. National Republicans, making a cynical trade-off, have given him a pass. With the arrival of COVID-19, the country is paying dearly for Republicans’ political calculations.

Now, still all-in with Trump, the party will scramble furiously to avoid a reckoning.

(Image: On April 1, Trump brought out the generals.)

Donald Trump, Off the Rails

In the midst of a deadly pandemic, President Donald Trump is boasting about his TV ratings

…On Monday, nearly 12.2 million people watched Mr. Trump’s briefing on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to Nielsen — ‘Monday Night Football’ numbers. Millions more are watching on ABC, CBS, NBC and online streaming sites, and the audience is expanding. On Monday, Fox News…

…alone attracted 6.2 million viewers for the president’s briefing — an astounding number for a 6 p.m. cable broadcast, more akin to the viewership for a popular prime-time sitcom…

…The CBS News poll said 13 percent of Republicans trusted the news media for information about the virus.” Michael M. Grynbaum @NYTimes  

Image, from animation by Worldwide Engineering, illustrating the daily increase in coronavirus cases by country from January 23 through March 28, 2020, as the United States became the globe’s leading nation for the infection:

Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans, Tribalism

Republicans in Congress, FNC, and GOP voters stand pat as Trump’s ongoing failures increase the death toll

Yesterday, the United States of American became the world’s leader in known cases of coronavirus (even though testing continues to lag). As of Sunday morning, the number of deaths in the U.S. has doubled since Thursday.

The world’s greatest democracy still has no national strategy for combating the coronavirus outbreak. The reason for this failure is obvious for all to see: the President of the United States is incapable of competent leadership. The breakdown, which began in January (when “faced with the coronavirus, Mr. Trump chose not to have the White House lead the planning until nearly two months after it began“), is ongoing.

At his daily briefings he misinforms the public (putting Americans who believe him at risk), offers self-congratulations and points fingers at others; he vacillates and changes his mind from one day to the next (based on criticism he sees on cable TV).

Every status report and decision is from his perspective chiefly about him, not about the state of the nation, the well being of Americans, or pulling out all the stops to blunt the pandemic.

‘The federal government’s done a helluvua job. . . .

… I think we’ve done a great job for the state of Washington.  And I think the governor’s a failed presidential candidate, as you know — he — he leveled out at zero in the polls.  He’s constantly chirping and — I guess ‘complaining’ would be a nice way of saying it.  We’re building hospitals.  We’ve done a great job for the state of Washington.

Michigan, all she does is — she has no idea what’s going on.  And all she does is say, “Oh, it’s the federal government’s fault.”  And we’ve taken such great care of Michigan. . . .

We have done a job the likes of which nobody’s seen. . . .

I think they should be appreciative because you know what?  When they’re not appreciative to me, they’re not appreciative to the Army Corps.  They’re not appreciative to FEMA.  It’s not right.  These people are incredible.  They’re working 24 hours a day.  Mike Pence — I mean, Mike Pence, I don’t think he sleeps anymore.  These — these are people that should be appreciated.

He calls all the governors.  I tell him — I mean, I’m a different type of person — I say, “Mike, don’t call the governor of Washington.  You’re wasting your time with him.  Don’t call the woman in Michigan.”  All — it doesn’t make any difference what happens — . . .

You know what I say?  If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.  He’s a different type of person.  He’ll call quietly anyway.  Okay?’

The country is paying an extraordinarily high cost for the President’s misrule:

https://twitter.com/Politidope/status/1244252490738143233

George Conway has Trump exactly right (as I have agreed): Trump is psychologically incapable of fulfilling the framers’ vision of the presidency.

But half the country — and based on public evidence, half of George Conway’s household — refuses to engage in a frank national discussion.

I am confident that Senate Republicans — most of them, probably, but certainly enough of them when added to all Democrats could have reached a 2/3 vote for impeachment — are well aware of the President’s incapacity. They refuse as a matter of practical partisan politics to acknowledge this or they downplay, no matter what disasters ensue, the magnitude of the harm to our country. So, who are we going to engage in this conversation?

The party’s base, egged on by Fox News Channel, overwhelmingly approves of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

If Trump were politically more skillful and not psychologically debilitated, this could have become a defining success of his presidency. He could have brought the country together à la George W. Bush following 9-11. He would have had to recognize the significance of the problem, rely on the expertise available to a president, and put the federal government to work coordinating a national response. Instead of denying or diminishing the threat, he would have had to speak truthfully about it — and reassured the public with a strategic plan to meet the challenge. (We can imagine, without a stretch, both of his immediate predecessors in the White House, one Republican and one Democrat, acting in this way.)

Had Trump been willing and capable of doing the right thing, he could have nurtured a larger governing majority than the Republican base. Trump’s self-interest and the national interest would have overlapped completely.

This was not to be. Trump cannot overcome his incapacities.

The devastation wrought by COVID-19 will be much greater as a result of Trump’s failures. Unless nature takes a fortuitous turn, Red states and Red regions will not be spared. Will his base stick with him come what may, adding “yet another grievance to their indictment of the liberal establishment” rather than hold Trump responsible? So far, those voters have not wavered.

(Map from New York Times.)

Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans, Tribalism

How did nearly half the country — Trump fans and FNC viewers — get things so wrong?

A reporter asked me today why conservatives were initially so skeptical of the threat of the coronavirus. I tried to explain that one of the dangerous consequences of having a totally dishonest left wing news media was that most Americans discounted their hysteria as phony. – Newt Gingrich

This sample of duplicity and distraction, from a familiar Fox News Channel contributor, is classic Gingrich. The first sentence presents an issue raised by a reporter: “why conservatives were initially so skeptical of the threat of the coronavirus.” The second sentence goes completely off the rails. It’s a clinic on how Trump and Trump apologists obfuscate, distort, and deceive.

“I tried to explain,” begins Gingrich, the ever-tolerant professor offering instruction. Well, not exactly. Instead, in an act of misdirection, he hurls incendiary language, attacking media outfits seeking to inform the public, while completely ignoring the explanation in plain sight.

The issue is why conservatives have been ‘skeptical.’ Polling clearly demonstrates that there has been a persistent reluctance on the right to accept well-established facts. It is hardly true that “most Americans” discounted accurate reports of the threat from the sources where they get their news. A majority of Democrats and independents (who together outnumber Republicans) have taken the reports as credible. We believed what we heard and saw on cable and broadcast television and what we read in newspapers and online. It is a minority of Americans – base Republicans, Donald Trump’s most intense followers – who have been skeptical of the scientific and medical reporting on the coronavirus.

Why were conservatives – grassroots enthusiasts of Donald Trump – so thoroughly misinformed about coronavirus?

CNN and NBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post (to highlight a few of Trump’s bugbears), while fallible, share a journalistic mission: to find the facts and accurately report them. Since the news business is competitive, they seek to get it right, because – otherwise – their errors will be exposed by other mainstream news outlets. They will lose credibility among viewers and readers who wish to know what’s going on. We can say the same thing about scientists, medical researchers, and doctors: while they make mistakes, they try to get it right.

Conservative media do not embrace this journalistic mission (or the ethos of science) to inform accurately. Their job, in the conservative media ecosystem, is to bolster faith in their leader, to cast doubt on facts that might undermine that faith, and to attack and disparage anyone who contradicts the message of the day.

Gingrich, who changed the Republican Party, the Congress, and finally the country, by teaching other Republicans to insult, denigrate, and slander Democrats, introduced an era in American politics where one party (the GOP) has made the other party the enemy, where Democrats’ views are so far beyond the pale they deserve only contempt. Part of this project was to undermine independent (“totally dishonest left wing”) sources of information (from journalists, government agencies, scientists, and medical authorities, among others), whenever or wherever that information challenged conservative messaging.

In Adam Serwer’s words (“Donald Trump’s Cult of Personality Did This“):

Gingrich’s attempted indictment of the mainstream press is a backhanded acknowledgment that the conservative media do not conceive of their job as informing the public.

. . .

Fox News told its audience that the coronavirus was a minor problem their heroic leader was quickly resolving, while quietly having its staff follow the very precautions its hosts were ridiculing on air. The mainstream press didn’t force Fox News to do that.

Gingrich, offering pronouncements from Italy, separated himself from the skepticism of American conservatives, but he has had a staring role in bolstering the conservative media universe that has deliberately deceived its audience and in destroying confidence in independent reporting and inquiry that has created that audience. These conservative achievements, not mainstream media reporting, are responsible for the “dangerous consequences” he references.

Gingrich’s tweet presents a phony explanation for why conservative viewers and readers are sadly misinformed about a grave threat to public health.

Democrats, Republicans, Tribalism

Americans view Trump and COVID-19 through starkly different lenses: one Red, one Blue

The dire lack of test kits (in spite of repeated denials and broken promises by the Trump administration) continues to hamper public health efforts to contain the coronavirus. When asked (on March 13) whether he accepted responsibility for the shortage, Trump replied:

“No, I don’t take responsibility at all.”

Instead he blamed the Obama administration for an unspecificed “decision” that tied his hands (more than three years after he took office). Policy experts were baffled by the claim. (“To our knowledge, there were some discussions about laboratory developed test rules but nothing was ever put into place. So we are not aware of anything that changed how LDTs are regulated.”)

There is also a dire shortage of personal protective equipment, PPE — such as face shields, masks, head covers, and respirators — for doctors, nurses, and other medical staff. In light of this shortfall, medical personnel are even being instructed to reuse (generally single-use) N-95 masks.

When asked about the lack of safety equipment, Trump shrugged off responsibility and pointed to the nation’s governors:

“Governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work. . . . The federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items, and then shipping. We’re not a shipping clerk.”

This is not leadership. But for nearly half the country, it’s close enough to satisfy.

Ronald Brownstein (“Red and Blue America Aren’t Experiencing the Same Pandemic”) notes that the spread of the coronavirus is playing out much differently in Red and Blue areas of the country: “That disconnect is already shaping, even distorting, the nation’s response to this unprecedented challenge—and it could determine the pandemic’s ultimate political consequences as well.”

National surveys reveal that Democrats express greater concern about the virus than Republicans, and attest to making more changes in their personal behavior in response. Democratic governors for the most part are acting aggressively to slow the spread of the virus; fewer Republicans (Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is an exception) are doing so.

Furthermore, the ideological disparity is matched by a geographical division. New York, Washington, and California — in virtue of the disease’s impact in their metro areas — have by far the most cases, though other states (especially those with large cities) are catching up. In Red states with large metro areas — Texas, Arizona, Georgia, and Tennessee, for instance — Democratic mayors and city councils are imposing social distancing restrictions.

Brownstein quotes Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of Rule and Ruin (a history of the modern Republican Party), regarding the urban-rural divide:

“There’s a long history of conservatives demonizing the cities as sources of disease to threaten the ‘pure heartland.’ That’s an old theme. . . . So that could be how it goes down.”

Kabaservice also alludes to the Republican suspicion of elites who comprise the scientific establishment and academia, professionals within government agencies, and of course the media (apart from Fox News Channel and other outfits within the conservative media universe).

We are seeing that on each side of the divide, folks are falling in line with the preconceptions of their tribe. Democrats look to scientific and medical authorities, acknowledge the reality of the pandemic, and accept journalists’ reports on Trump’s dissembling and his administration’s evident failures. Republicans are more likely to accept Trump’s messaging that diminishes the threat, to trust his efforts to protect public health, to endorse his rejection of expert opinion inside and outside of government, and to share his finger pointing at China, other countries, Democrats, and journalists whose reporting casts doubt on the President’s rosy view.

This exchange is all too typical, and will be viewed from starkly different lenses by Democrats and Republicans:

Peter Alexander (asking what he regarded as a softball question): “What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?”

Trump responds: “I say that you’re a terrible reporter. That’s what I say.”

I think it’s a very nasty question. And I think it’s a very bad signal that you’re putting out to the American people.

The American people are looking for answers and they are looking for hope. And you’re doing sensationalism — and the same with NBC and Concast. I don’t call it Comcast, I call it Concast … for whom you work.

Let me just say something: That’s really bad reporting. And you ought to get back to reporting, instead of sensationalism.

Let’s see if it works. It might. And it might not. I happen to feel good about it. But, who knows? I’ve been right a lot! Let’s see what happens.

Donald Trump has never sought to appeal to all Americans. He consistently appeals to his base, while disparaging the other half of the country. (My first post in this blog referenced this dichotomy.)

And I believe Trump is in sync with his base. The grassroots Republicans who embrace the President come what may, don’t want to hear any message that detracts from the party line. They want to hear Trump’s rosy scenario.

And Trump could be right. Within a few months, we may look back at COVID-19 as something that didn’t have the dire, long-term consequences media reports have led us to expect. It may, like a miracle, just disappear one day, perhaps mere weeks from now.

Trump’s supporters are sticking with him, hoping for — even expecting — the best. He can weave, and dodge, and change his story as often as he likes. He can point his fingers at everyone but himself. He can make fanciful claims, deny observable facts, and contradict scientists and medical authorities. But his base embraces his authority and outlook. (“He doesn’t lie. I know y’all say he does. He doesn’t. He doesn’t.“)

And what if things don’t turn out for the best? Will their support waver? Will they stray from the party when it comes time to vote in November?

Don’t count on it (even though some may jump off the Trump train). More likely: the hardcore base, the true believers in Trump’s camp — the overwhelming majority of Republicans who voted for Trump in 2016 — will readily blame the Chinese, the Europeans, the Mexicans. They will point the finger at Democrats, liberals, elites — the folks who, in their judgment, look down on them. They will fault urban dwellers, minorities, and non-white immigrants who, in their view, don’t qualify as real Americans.

If things turn out badly, if COVID-19 hits their communities as hard as it is beginning to hit the Blue regions of the country, they are likely to add yet another grievance to their indictment of the liberal establishment, not to hold Trump responsible.

Whether Trump is right or wrong, whether his bet — playing exclusively to the Republican base — will pay off in November, this is the wager that Trump is staking his Presidency on.

It’s a wager he has placed before. He won the prize in 2016.

We have Blue America on one side, Red America on the other. The outcome in November will hinge on turnout. And perhaps, if things are close enough, on that mushy middle, that sliver of folks who mostly don’t pay enough attention to have a side.

An ABC/Ipsos poll reveals that a healthy majority of Americans approve of the way Trump is handling the response to the Coronavirus (COVID-19). Right now the mushy middle seems to be leaning toward Trump.

November 3 is a long way off. We don’t know how bad things will get or how long recovery will take. At this stage, though, the 2020 election appears to represent a daunting challenge for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.