It's the real thing, and he's bungling it
Max Boot
Columnist
March 7, 2020 at 1:22 p.m. EST
... The “caravans” of Central American refugees — the subject of hysteria before the 2018 midterm elections — were a threat only in Trump’s own mind. The North American Free Trade Agreement wasn’t “the worst trade deal ever made” and didn’t need to be renegotiated. Iran wasn’t violating the nuclear accord and the United States didn’t need to pull out of the deal. North Korea’s nuclear program is a threat, but Pyongyang wasn’t about to start a war with the United States. The trade deficit with China wasn’t a problem according to most economists, and China’s abusive trade practices did next to nothing to hurt the U.S. economy.
In each of these cases, Trump reacted to an imaginary crisis by dialing up an over-the-top response — threatening to close the border with Mexico and to blow up NAFTA, imposing sanctions on Iran and tariffs on China, and hinting at a preemptive military strike on North Korea. Then, after having thrown a theatrical temper tantrum, he predictably backed down: Trump negotiated a new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that differed from NAFTA chiefly in the name; he embraced Kim Jong Un at a series of summits; he reached a trade agreement in which China promised to buy more U.S. agricultural goods without fundamentally changing its trading practices; he killed Iran’s most prominent general but declined to escalate after Iran’s symbolic retaliation against U.S. bases in Iraq; and he simply stopped talking about the caravans altogether ...
The one exception — the one crisis largely out of Trump’s control — was Hurricane Maria, which ravaged Puerto Rico in September 2017. The administration’s response was horribly botched. Aid was delayed and power was out for months, causing some 3,000 deaths. Trump’s response was to deny the deaths, attack the mayor of San Juan, accuse Puerto Ricans of being lazy and toss paper towels at hurricane survivors as if they were seals getting fish from a trainer. It was pathetic and shameful ...
The novel coronavirus is the first major crisis that Trump confronts that he did not create and whose impact he cannot escape with .. bluster and bravado ... His performance at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta on Friday .. was incoherent, delusional and frightening ...
Trump seemed more interested in protecting his own image than in protecting the country ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/07/usually-trump-creates-his-own-crises-coronavirus-is-real-thing-hes-bungling-it/
= new reply since forum marked as read
because in-person voting in November could be a full-on clusterfuck, and that's looking more likely every day
we need mail-in ballots throughout the country
we've needed it for years, but obviously R's don't want that
they know Biden could be the beneficiary of the backlash against the evil swampmonster
They have probably already realized this virus outbreak can suppress voting like nothing else
they are hoping we'll be too panicked to think or act to prepare in time
we are tired of them winning
let's start making some noise
NATIONAL VOTE BY MAIL NOW, OR 4 MORE YEARS OF TRUMP!! 
