Trump's Plan to Contain the Coronavirus by Unleashing Anarchy Seems Risky
Trump’s Plan to Contain the Coronavirus by Unleashing Anarchy Seems Risky
By Jonathan Chait at the Intelligencer, NY Magazine
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/trump-coronavirus-liberate-michigan-minnesota-virginia-lockdowns-tests.html
"SNIP.....
President Trump has two basic modes of governing: abnegation and abuse. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has alternately — and, at times, simultaneously — claimed absolute authority and zero responsibility for the crisis. On Thursday, he seemed to lurch back toward abnegation, telling governors they could “call their own shots” about when to reopen public spaces, and they are also “going to lead the testing.”
Today, he is lurching back toward abuse. In a series of wild, all-caps tweets, he called for unspecified revolutionary activity against three states with Democratic governors:
....
The source of Trump’s peripatetic swings is his inability to competently manage the pandemic. He wants to ease up on social-distancing rules soon, but public-health officials have unanimously insisted that doing so requires an effective testing system. (Otherwise, those states could be vulnerable to new outbreaks that could spread before state authorities have the chance to stop them.) But despite Trump’s absurd lies that the United States has the best tests in the world, and that other countries are trying to copy our tests, the testing system has been in a state of shambles all along.
That failure necessitated his decision yesterday to throw all responsibility to the states. Administration officials tell the Washington Post this posture “is largely designed to shield himself from blame should there be new outbreaks after states reopen or for other problems.”
.....SNIP"
= new reply since forum marked as read
