It should not be a surprise to anyone he is completely denying having any responsibility for this. Not because he is human scum, but because the one time he tried it bit him hard. Imagine how much worse it would be if he took ANY responsibility for people dying.
The first government shutdown Trump took responsibility and was eviscerated by nearly everyone on the left. It played well, turning the polls showing a majority of people blaming Trump.
He learned that lesson well. I think the first time he was trying to show he can be a leader and handle the burden of responsibility and leadership. Ever since that time he has denied any responsibility at all for even the smallest of issues.
Its like he never had to self-evaluate in a job before? Its a trick question! Never say 10 out of 10, only go 8 or 9. Leave room for improvement. They’re only interested in your hindsight, descriptions, and methods, but if you’re smart you can also work in numerous self advocacy. Jeez, what a amateur.
Any day now Trump is going to acknowledge it’s time to cut his losses and will ask his advisers what the presidential equivalent of declaring bankruptcy is and how he files for it.
What we’re seeing now…is nothing. We’re about to see intense pressure on ERs in major cities. The shift of tone is an awareness that this could happen, but they’re not yet aware of what that will actually look like on camera. People are going to take their loved one with a nagging cough to the hospital and expect treatment; they’ll find out that their loved one won’t get treated. They won’t know it, but they’ll be taking their loved one there to die. The doctors will unfortunately be confronted with multiple patients at the same time and not know which one to start with.
Yeah, right now it looks like Trump will pay a steep price for all this.
But what if the crisis plays out over the spring and summer, and while it’s bad it’s not all-caps BAD. And then in late summer/early fall, things start to normalize. Kids go back to school. Bars and restaurants re-open. A couple of music festivals actually happen. High school and college sports resume. The stock market rallies. Everyone starts to feel a lot better about life, and the survivors (which will be most of us, after all) share a belief that we’re all a lot stronger for having endured
All of which would be wonderful. Except guess who gets to bask in the recovery and take full credit?
Wait and see what happens when the outbreak becomes patchworky in terms of severity, and different states, counties, and cities will start to block entry from adjacent states, counties, and cities. Splits will undoubtedly occur along racial/economic lines, as the poorest will be hit hardest for all of the usual reasons. Meanwhile, Trump will still be standing at a burning podium telling us everything’s just peachy.
Rather, what HE has done is just peachy, but he [del]whines[/del] insists he’s fighting a conspiracy of Dems, Chinese, atheists, Mexicans, socialists, welfare queens, aardvarks, Zeta Reticulans, and uptight [del]bitches[/del] frigid sluts. He’ll improvise as usual.
I think most of them have convinced themselves that the media is conspiring to make this out worse than it is to make Trump look bad.
I have literally had conversations where I had to remind people that this pandemic is going on all over the world and this thing has affected other countries pretty severely.
Now Trump did something right when he banned travel with China. He bought us a month or so to get prepared. The problem is that he didn’t spend that month getting prepared. He spent that month goosing the stock market and whistling past the graveyard because even if it was perfectly handled, it would have a pretty negative impact and probably means he won’t get re-elected.
And then George H.W. Bush pardoned everyone convicted of anything with respect to the Iran-Contra Affair, so there were no consequences whatsoever for running a private arms smuggling network out of the National Security Council.
“I play it very loose. I don’t carry a briefcase. I try not to schedule too many meetings. I leave my door open…I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops.”
[RIGHT]-- Donald Trump, The Art of the Deal[/RIGHT]
But for him to get away with holding onto office election-free into the next term, he’ll need buy-in from a lot of folks, including Congress, the Courts, the military, the Secret Service, the Marshalls, etc.
If we’ve gotten to the point where he could get away with it so easily, whether or not we hold elections at all is rather irrelevant.
And, if he were to attempt it, the Constitution gives him an eviction notice for January 20, 2021. If there’s no election, both he and Pence are out of jobs. The Order of Succession kicks in, and we get President Pelosi.