Trump puts Jared back in the covid saddle again. How soon will we hit 200,000 deaths? Giddyup!
Kerry Eleveld
PUBLISHED TO
Donald Trump didn't even have to be good at containing the
coronavirus. All he really had to do was try, just a little, and he'd
likely still be competitive in the presidential race.
“The irony is that if he’d just performed with minimal competence and just mouthed words about national unity, he actually could be in a pretty strong position right now, where the economy is reopening, where jobs are coming back,” Ben Rhodes, a top aide to former president Barack Obama, told The Washington Post. “And he just could not do it.”
Many Trump allies are reportedly still mystified by the fact that Trump hasn't been able to put forward a bare minimum effort—particularly because the obvious path to running on the economy was making sure the virus was contained enough to reopen the country and get schools back up and running.
But Trump, not surprisingly, was too busy wallowing in self-pity about the pandemic to take in any serious strategic advice. In fact, aides found themselves devoting more time to serving as Trump's therapist than actually discussing how to combat the public health emergency. Amid his victimhood, the Post also reports Trump had a "pathological unwillingness" to acknowledge he had fumbled the response.
Instead, he tuned out all that pesky negativity to drink in rosy reports from Fox News and optimistic projections from people like Dr. Deborah Birx.
But after top aides managed to convince Trump the virus was now ravaging red states—or "our people," as they put it—he finally bowed to reality. As Trump resurrected the White House coronavirus task force briefings last week, he charged, “This could have been stopped. It could have been stopped quickly and easily. But for some reason, it wasn’t, and we’ll figure out what that reason was."
Not to worry, Trump's gonna pinpoint whoever presided over this disaster and deal with them, very strongly. And he's put his top people on the case. A sub-coronavirus task force is now being led by Dr. Birx (whose sunny projections helped get us into this mess) and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner (who spearheaded the botched national testing effort that has permanently hamstrung the U.S. response). Aces.
The fact that Birx and Kushner are now heading up a new effort to bring the pandemic under control effectively means we're destined to flail, at least until January 20 of next year.
It's also an indication of why Trump was never going to be able to demonstrate even a modicum of competence. He just took two people who were key players in screwing the entire effort at the outset and put them in charge of his response reboot.
At this point, the only thing that's actually mystifying about Trump's incompetence is that anyone thinks he's capable of anything different. He doesn't like governing, he doesn't like serving, he hates the roughly two-thirds of Americans who reside in U.S. cities, he doesn't like reality, he tunes out bad news, he never takes responsibility, and he's preternaturally incapable of combatting a virus because he's demented and doesn't believe in science.
What’s actually baffling is that anyone at all—let alone people who have been advising him—expected anything different than the unmitigated failure Trump’s delivered.
“The irony is that if he’d just performed with minimal competence and just mouthed words about national unity, he actually could be in a pretty strong position right now, where the economy is reopening, where jobs are coming back,” Ben Rhodes, a top aide to former president Barack Obama, told The Washington Post. “And he just could not do it.”
Many Trump allies are reportedly still mystified by the fact that Trump hasn't been able to put forward a bare minimum effort—particularly because the obvious path to running on the economy was making sure the virus was contained enough to reopen the country and get schools back up and running.
But Trump, not surprisingly, was too busy wallowing in self-pity about the pandemic to take in any serious strategic advice. In fact, aides found themselves devoting more time to serving as Trump's therapist than actually discussing how to combat the public health emergency. Amid his victimhood, the Post also reports Trump had a "pathological unwillingness" to acknowledge he had fumbled the response.
Instead, he tuned out all that pesky negativity to drink in rosy reports from Fox News and optimistic projections from people like Dr. Deborah Birx.
But after top aides managed to convince Trump the virus was now ravaging red states—or "our people," as they put it—he finally bowed to reality. As Trump resurrected the White House coronavirus task force briefings last week, he charged, “This could have been stopped. It could have been stopped quickly and easily. But for some reason, it wasn’t, and we’ll figure out what that reason was."
Not to worry, Trump's gonna pinpoint whoever presided over this disaster and deal with them, very strongly. And he's put his top people on the case. A sub-coronavirus task force is now being led by Dr. Birx (whose sunny projections helped get us into this mess) and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner (who spearheaded the botched national testing effort that has permanently hamstrung the U.S. response). Aces.
The fact that Birx and Kushner are now heading up a new effort to bring the pandemic under control effectively means we're destined to flail, at least until January 20 of next year.
It's also an indication of why Trump was never going to be able to demonstrate even a modicum of competence. He just took two people who were key players in screwing the entire effort at the outset and put them in charge of his response reboot.
At this point, the only thing that's actually mystifying about Trump's incompetence is that anyone thinks he's capable of anything different. He doesn't like governing, he doesn't like serving, he hates the roughly two-thirds of Americans who reside in U.S. cities, he doesn't like reality, he tunes out bad news, he never takes responsibility, and he's preternaturally incapable of combatting a virus because he's demented and doesn't believe in science.
What’s actually baffling is that anyone at all—let alone people who have been advising him—expected anything different than the unmitigated failure Trump’s delivered.
Just keep after that virus, Donald. Maybe a packet of McDonald's ketchup will make it a little more palatable.
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