Well, yeah – the real-time verdict has not exactly been resounding with hosannahs, either.
Not since the Great Depression have the people in the United States been so completely overwhelmed by crisis and so abandoned by their so-called leaders.
D'Antonio how Trump's "profound personal shortcomings – deficiencies of his heart and mind" has brought the US to this moment.
After a lifetime devoted to avoiding responsibility and accountability – for his lies, his deceptions, his hype, and his cruelty – President Donald Trump has met his match in the pandemic of 2020. His bluff and bluster are powerless as thousands of Americans die and the blame falls, in part, on his failure to heed the warnings and execute a robust national response. This occurred even though a pandemic playbook had been left behind by the Obama administration. ...
On one level, Trump's failure can be traced to his original lie: the false image he sold to the American people in order to hide his shortcomings. Never a competent manager of complex organizations – witness his many bankruptcies – Trump rose to fame pitching the illusion that he was a great businessman. As he sought the presidency he used counterattacks, lies, and skillful denials to avoid answering for his record and gain the White House. ...
Trump's profound personal shortcomings – deficiencies of his heart and mind – helped bring us to this moment.
The first of Trump's weaknesses? His lack of emotional intelligence and empathy, which causes him to struggle to relate to human suffering. The developer who made tenants miserable so they would move out allowing him to build luxury condos, became the president who downplayed hurricane deaths in Puerto Rico, and now barely speaks of those stricken and killed by the coronavirus. Instead, he obsesses over TV ratings ...
The second of Trump's deficiencies is a habit of mind that discounts expertise and elevates convenient opinions supported by cherry-picked sources of misinformation. Businessman Trump exhibited this willful ignorance when, for example, he said the scientific connection between asbestos exposure and disease was a matter of a conspiracy carried out by mobsters. ... President Trump has claimed to have extensive knowledge on a vast array of topics from forest management to drones. ...
Faced with an enemy that is literally killing people he stayed true to form as he pushed an unproven coronavirus treatment that's still under scientific review. "What do we have to lose?" Trump asked musing that people could just get prescriptions for the drug. ...
Until this crisis, Trump had avoided accountability with remarkable consistency. Born into astounding wealth, he avoided accountability by persuading creditors that he was too big to fail even after he ran businesses into the ground. In politics, he deflected accountability by blaming others, especially the press and Democrats, for problems that occurred on his watch. ...
America's Covid-19 death toll now passes 2,800 and the caseload exceeds 157,200 cases, But through much of the time that the number of cases was growing, the White House offered no coherent national response to the crisis. There have been sparse moments when Trump has sounded like a leader ... But these moments don't last long before Trump back to pitting states against each other and attacking journalists who ask legitimate questions about his response to the pandemic.
No federal agency is rallying health care workers to move to hot spots where they are needed. ... [T]he administration is letting states, hospitals, and federal agencies compete against each other. Trump even went so far as to accuse medical workers of hoarding supplies.
Recently Trump introduced a bit of personal petulance to this dynamic, suggesting that governors who aren't sufficiently deferential should be ignored by the White House. ... Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whom Trump singled out for criticism, reported that orders made for equipment had been canceled as suppliers favored the feds over her state.
The president's complaints about not being appreciated remind us that he takes everything personally and that his personal qualities of heartlessness and intellectual dishonesty will hobble his response to our suffering. Acutely attuned to his own feelings, he's so numb to the pain of others ... Likewise, he remains devoted to ... happy talk. With health care workers reusing disposable masks and using trash bags as protective gowns, Trump considered the federal effort to supply hospitals and announced, "It's hard not to be happy with the job we're doing."
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