March 2nd 2020

By Leroy Knhol

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We have all sat back, feeling helpless, while we have watched Donald Trump eviscerate our government’s capabilities and plant people in critical government roles—not because they are competent to do the job, but because either they have lobbied against the job they were assigned or because they have expressed blind loyalty to the President.  This has been upsetting for us all; these people do not serve our country well, but we end up marking time and hoping to defeat Trump in November so we can stanch this damage.

For Trump, the coronavirus shook the very ground he thought he was standing on.  Suddenly it is imperative that His government takes dramatic steps or watch thousands die, with Trump being held politically accountable.  Trump was warned two months ago that this could become a serious crisis, but he continued on, entertaining his base with rallies while continuing to cut the resources the Center for Disease Control and Prevention need to react.  “Since the day he took office, Trump has worked tirelessly to limit funding, dismantle teams of experts, and interrupt nearly any strategic-planning initiative necessary to defend the country against the type of inevitable biological assault that we now face.  Early on the Trump Administration fired the government’s entire pandemic-response chain of command, including the White House management staff. 

 “Less than a month ago, and weeks after covid-19 had been recognized as a virus with pandemic potential, the Administration proposed a budget that called for the Department of Health and Human Services to cut twenty-five million dollars from the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, and also eighteen million dollars from the Hospital Preparedness Program.” — The New Yorker

Now that Trump realizes the COVID-19 coronavirus is a political hot-potato, his actions smell more like politics than healthcare.  His appointment of Mike Pence to head the effort merely signals his hope of containing the negative announcements of the virus’s growth that would harm his reelection.  He announced taking money—woefully inadequate for the cause—from programs for the poor, never missing an opportunity to scale back the social safety net.

As Robert Reich has said: “A new and especially virulent contagious virus is bad enough. That it is spreading at a time when the US government is headed by an incompetent and vindictive paranoid who denies it, blames his opponents for it, and dismantles what’s left of the institutions that could contain it, makes the danger far worse.”

The Trump Administration is about casting blame on anyone but themselves, declaring media coverage is an effort to “bring down the President.”  "The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus," Trump said. This is one time when Trump’s lying could have life-threatening consequences. Meanwhile, Trump can be expected to continue declaring: “You’re doing a great job, Mike!”

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