It is truly a fool’s errand trying to make sense of anything Donald Trump does, beyond assuming he sees it as being in his very personal self-interest. But given that –and only that — that as an incontestabe reality, I still can not understand his refusal to ramp up and coordinate nation-wide testing for COVID-19.
If you accept that every move he makes is sociopathically-focused on getting himself reelected in November, and by that I mean shamelessly re-writing recently (recorded) history, scanning the radar for any and every possibility to lay blame for this catastrophic debacle on someone else and encouraging his troll-cult of “gun enthusiasts” to actively rebel against the states on whom he’s sloughed off the fundamental responsibilities of the federal government, the lack of “testing thing” still makes no sense.
I don’t know about you, but I long, long ago stopped thinking that Trump — a man who can’t read note-card memos much less books and thinks Captain Bligh was a role model for “very powerful” leadership — makes many or really any of the policy decisions in his White House. Clearly, he has no interest in doing anything other than the ceremonial, lights-and-cameras-on work of being President.
(The latest example were his “Liberate Minnesota!”, “Liberate Michigan!” and “Liberate Virginia, and save your great Second Amendment! It’s under siege!” tweets. These were tweets posted not as he was in his gold-trimmed jammies late at night, getting ready to go nighty-night after a snack of Kentucky Fried Chicken, nor were they even in the early AM, a bit groggy and entertaining impure thoughts about the blonde on “Fox and Friends”. No. They were just before noon, in the middle of a supposedly all-hands-on-deck, 24/7 fight against an international pandemic, and seconds after watching some nitwit on FoxNews. He was watching fcking TV! Point being … he never works at his job. Someone else is doing that.)
The assumption, already well-documented through contemporary reporting and almost certain to be verified in the “after action” investigations into what — to repeat myself — is the worst dereliction of duty and failure of executive function by a president in U.S. history, is that Trump “policy” such as it is is a product of the imaginations of others. Like, for example, 34 year-old former high school malcontent/Joe Goebbels-like senior advisor Stephen Miller. And the chronically-bungling senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner. And likely the various old tycoon cronies like Tom Barrack — (one of) the guys who did what he could to profiteer off the 2008 collapse, the inauguration and every Trump move since, along with whoever followed him into the men’s room, and of course the deep thinkers on talk radio and FoxNews.
But even then, with Trump as this vain empty vessel playing useful idiot for America’s worst characters and impulses, it makes no sense not to use the Defense Production Act and divert a fraction of the fire hose of deficit-exploding money for a Manhattan Project-style nationwide testing program. Testing, ordered by him (or whoever) and directed by him (or one of his many “task forces”) would without question have the effect of restoring a semblance of order and a functioning economy … before the election.
As we know from those pesky things called numbers, testing in the USA is slowing down rather than speeding up.
As dismaying as it it to imagine, Trump would be rewarded for at least doing that, never mind so completely screwing up the response to a forseeable and well-predicted international disaster.
So why isn’t Team Trump, Miller, (or the latest chief of staff and ex-North Carolina hill country real estate broker Mark Meadows), Jared, Ivanka, Sean Hannity, etc., pushing him on this? It’s not like he’d have to, you know, do anything. He wouldn’t have to show up in a WalMart parking lot and stick swabs up voters’ noses. He wouldn’t have to even break into any of his free-styling gibberish-and-invective spewing afternoon press rallies to express a moment’s worth of empathy for the 35,000 – 40,000 already dead. Hell, he could even go out and play golf! (They might even let him use the ball-washers.)
The only explanation that makes any sense is that someone, somehow has already made it clear that his failure to date is so far beyond the range of Herbert Hoover, (as in Hoover times-100), that the only election strategy now worth pursuing is to pour everything into the blame game. Blame everything on the states, states with Democratic governors in particular. THEY refused to do their job! THEY refused to test! THEIR incompetence is what has held down the economy. And THEIR whining about needing Trump’s help only shows THEIR ineptitude and weakness.
Without testing there’s no imaginable way the economic tragedy of Trump’s incompetence will have dissipated by November. With testing — at the level of hundreds of thousands per day — there is at least a real-world chance that recovery would be sufficient enough to allow millions to return to work.
And at that point thousands would forget/ignore how all this got so off-the-charts bad and vote to give Dear Leader another chance.
Go ahead explain it to me. I don’t get it.
Look, this is all speculation, fueled by cabin fever and alcohol, but Trump seems to be basically an oppositional kind of guy. He’s against things more than he is for things. I think that he is feeling pressure to do something on testing, and he is pushing back–because to give in to pressure is, in his mind, to lose. He’s lost on telling the states that they have to open on his schedule, so he lashes out with his “liberate” tweets.
That, and he basically does not have anyone that he trusts to tell him that testing would help him, nor does he have anyone competent enough to get this done for him–because competence in an underling is threatening to him. He clearly feels threatened by Fauci, and will probably get rid of him as soon as he (Trump) feels it is safe to do so. He doesn’t know how to delegate, and he is scared to delegate too much power and influence, because he is insecure.
So much for my arm chair psychologizing…..
Well, Dr. Maritz, if he truly doesn’t have anyone he trusts telling him to make a push on testing … for the good of his own reelection … are we then red-lining Jared and Ivanka as well as Meadows, etc.?
When that first cruise ship, I forget the name, was waiting off the California coast, President Trump said (on camera) that he didn’t want the ship to dock because the number of cases “would go up.” Zero concern for people, 100% concern for his numbers.
I suspect this is still in Trump’s head. Testing will reveal far more people have been infected than previously thought. (It could also drive down the percentages of people requiring hospitalization, and the fatality rate)
I’d guess he imagines the campaign ads contrasting him saying “hoax” with the numbers of dead and infected.
It boggles me. He will inevitably say that if the final death toll is 120,000, “Without me it would have been 50 million.” (And his base will believe that.) The only (other) explanation I can come with is that he’s such a malignant narcissist … he truly doesn’t care.
My two cents for what it’s worth. I think testing is a losing proposition for him at this point. If we get the testing to the level it needs to be, two bad things will happen in Trump Land. Data has shown that with more testing the cases of Covid-19 increase (the number of actual cases won’t rise but the tests will reveal cases that otherwise go unreported; those with mild to moderate symptoms for example.) This scenario indicates we are not doing as well in controlling the virus as a Trump wants to portray. Second, with additional cases being revealed the economy will not “reopen” according to his plan for moving forward.
Feel free to disagree but I think Trump – or his handlers – don’t really want extensive testing.
I won’t disagree. But it still seems a lower risk proposition than no testing/too little testing and another flare up right around election day. I read some “inside anonymous source” quoted the other day to the effect that is was “business interests” who lobbied Trump against testing. But ask yourself, given how the Trump White House leaks, what corporate exec would risk saying such a thing within range of that crowd? I suppose it could someone like Steve Schwarzman, and he’s got some kind of epic short game going … .
Maybe the goal is to make things such a mess that the election must be called off, or at least make sure that it’s impossible for many to vote.
Knowing he faces a torrent of law suits/financial ruin if he loses the election, NOTHING is beyond what Trump is prepared to do to stay in office.
Could it be that he and his handlers don’t get the scientific strategy behind testing, and don’t understand how countries like South Korea and Iceland have used it to their advantage? Could it also be that they find it ideologically distasteful to have the federal government running an umbrella program for the states?
I suppose. But somewhere — and certainly Fauci and Birx are pushing it — someone on his “reelection” team HAD to haverun the numbers of throwing X-billion in taxpayer money at it in order for him to say, “We did testing.” Of course in TrumpLand him just saying it, or them just hearing him saying it … is as good as a test.