America has learned a lot about The Don

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By Michael D'Antonio
Updated 4:29 PM ET, Sat March 14, 2020

(CNN)Surrounded by a cushion of businessmen and advisers, President Donald Trump took yet another stab at addressing the nation on the coronavirus crisis Friday — announcing a "national emergency," and some measures to fight the spreading disease — and performed in such an underwhelming fashion that you have to wonder whether something is wrong ...

The clearer notes he sounded Friday were a welcome change, but the word salad he soon lapsed into was a dissonant reminder about the man who is in charge. America is "rated number one in the world," and is helping other nations, he said. "They are doing OK in some cases ... in some cases they are not doing well at all." This means absolutely nothing.

The level of crisis the country faces under this pandemic is new, and Trump's performance has been abysmal — and familiar. For example, tests are not widely available in part because the administration declined to use a World Health Organization testing regime, choosing instead to develop its own, which has not worked as well as expected, according to an investigation from ProPublica. This fateful decision, which squandered precious time, helps explain why other countries have been better at tracking the virus, and tracking is essential to limiting outbreaks.

When a reporter asked Trump Friday to squarely address the shortcomings in the US approach to testing, he firmly refused to own any of it. "No, I don't take responsibility at all," said the President. This denial, after weeks of his downplaying the seriousness of the risk to the nation, is consistent with his longstanding habit of dodging blame for poor outcomes on his watch. But at this moment, do we really want to rely on a leader who refuses to take responsibility? ...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/14/opinions/in-coronavirus-crisis-america-has-learned-a-lot-about-triump-dantonio/index.html

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1. Seven deadly words: "No, I don't take responsibility at all"

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2. Washington State Leaders React to Emergency Declaration

By Daniel Beekman / The Seattle Times 9 hrs ago

... At a White House news conference, Trump said the move would open up as much as $50 billion in funding to help state and local governments respond to the coronavirus pandemic, including increased testing. But with the White House providing few details Friday, it was unclear exactly what federal help would be on the way to Washington and how much.

Inslee spoke to Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday and asked him to press Trump on the matter, the governor said at a news conference in Olympia after the president's announcement ...

In a statement, Public Health -- Seattle & King County said more aid is necessary. The region needs masks, gloves and other protective gear for vulnerable people, health care workers and first responders, "and we need boots on the ground -- strike teams of epidemiologists, nurses and social workers to respond to the growing number of new cases," the agency said.

"We are pleased the president has finally declared an emergency," Public Health said. "This is an important step towards acknowledging the reality that we are in and bringing critical funds to the state for response and economic mitigation. We need far more resources than this declaration calls for to expand access to testing, not just in theory but in practice" ...

http://www.chronline.com/community/washington-state-leaders-react-to-trump-s-coronavirus-emergency-declaration/article_62a047a6-6621-11ea-875f-13efdb73c1c7.html

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3. Turns Saturday Coronavirus Briefing Into Self-Congratulatory Rant About Stock Market

Donald Trump unexpectedly showed up to Saturday’s coronavirus briefing wearing his cartoonish USA ball cap, and he used the event to give himself a pat on the back for driving up the stock market on Friday.

“I was honored to see that the stock market … set a record in a short period of time, over a 45-minute period that we had the press conference yesterday,” Trump said. “I think we should do one of them everyday perhaps, how about five times a day?”

Time and again, through his words and actions, Trump has demonstrated that his chief concern is to prop up the stock market so his favorite reelection talking point can remain intact.

But the truth is, this administration’s response to the outbreak is likely too little, too late. The number of coronavirus cases is exponentially rising and the U.S. economy is likely already in the midst of a recession ...

https://www.politicususa.com/2020/03/14/trump-turns-saturday-coronavirus-briefing-into-self-congratulatory-rant-about-the-stock-market.html

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4. Bails Out Oil Industry, Not US Families

Common Dreams
Mar. 14, 2020 01:04PM EST

By Jon Queally

Climate action groups and progressive critics expressed disappointment and outrage on Friday afternoon after President Donald Trump — despite a continued failure to offer far-reaching support to the U.S. public — moved to bolster the bottom lines of oil and gas companies by announcing a massive federal purchase for the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

"Based on the price of oil, I've also instructed the Secretary of Energy to purchase at a very good price large quantities of crude oil for storage in the U.S. strategic reserve," Trump announced during a White House press conference — surrounded by CEOs from major corporations, including Walmart, CVS, and Target — in which he also declared an official national emergency in order to combat the outbreak of the coronavirus ...

https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-oil-industry-coronavirus-2645487635.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1

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5. Helped To Spread Coronavirus At Mar-a-Lago

Trump’s private club Mar-a-Lago that he has spent his presidency promoting has become a sort of ground zero for political figures being exposed to coronavirus.

CNN reported:

Two more members of a Brazilian delegation that traveled to the US, including one man who attended a dinner with President Donald Trump, have tested positive for the coronavirus ...

https://www.politicususa.com/2020/03/14/trump-helped-to-spread-coronavirus-at-mar-a-lago.html

I bought a membership and all I got was this lousy virus

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6. He's Chauncey Gardener's evil twin, I swear.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078841/

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7. Washington senator angry and frustrated

BY TAL AXELROD - 03/14/20 10:17 AM EDT

Washington Sen. Patty Murray (D) said ... "Look, from day one, when we started seeing this grow and develop in China and continue to grow rapidly and expansively, all of us should have been aware that issues like a virus don’t stay in one place. That we are a global community, people travel" ...

"Instead, the reaction from the federal government or from the person in the White House, in particular, was 'no worries, be happy,'" she said. "And I am so angry and frustrated at that" ...

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/487570-washington-senator-so-angry-and-frustrated-by-trumps-coronavirus-response

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8. Botched response

By German Lopez
Updated Mar 14, 2020, 12:25pm EDT

President Donald Trump’s failure to respond to the coronavirus pandemic didn’t begin with the administration’s inability to send out the millions of test kits experts say are needed to tackle the crisis. It didn’t start with Trump’s bungled messaging downplaying the crisis even as it’s worsened.

It began in April 2018 ...

The Trump administration, with John Bolton newly at the helm of the White House National Security Council, began dismantling the team in charge of pandemic response, firing its leadership and disbanding the team in spring 2018.

The cuts, coupled with the administration’s repeated calls to cut the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public health agencies, made it clear that the Trump administration wasn’t prioritizing the federal government’s ability to respond to disease outbreaks ....

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/14/21177509/coronavirus-trump-covid-19-pandemic-response

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9. Twitter Feed Tells Him About Coronavirus

By JORDAN MULLER
03/14/2020 07:10 AM EDT

The president follows only 47 accounts on Twitter, a collection of family members, conservative pundits, administration officials and Trump-brand properties ...

The picture Trump sees, in a nutshell: That the coronavirus crisis is someone else’s fault (China, Joe Biden, etc.), that he’s doing a great job responding to it, and that a Trump-hating media is just fanning the flames.

“The American people have seen once again that President @realDonaldTrump has no higher priority than the health and safety of the American people,” tweeted Vice President Mike Pence.

“Remember Democrats Pushed Impeachment While Coronavirus Spread,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted on Friday morning, with a link to a Breitbart column ...

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/14/trump-coronavirus-twitter-feed-covid-19-129170

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10. Dementia, Cognitive Decline Rumors

By Camille Heimbrod
03/14/20 AT 6:39 AM

... “Many contingencies. A lot of positive. Different numbers, all different numbers, very large numbers, and some small numbers too” ...

“The media should view this as a time of unity and strength. We have a common enemy, actually, an enemy of the world, the coronavirus. We must beat it as quickly and safely as possible. There is nothing more important to me than the life and safety of the United States” ...

The POTUS seemed glum while giving an update to the nation. It was also evident that Trump had a hard time reading the teleprompter.

At times when he couldn’t pronounce certain words properly, the POTUS would slow down a bit and try to enunciate his words. Since dementia is characterized by a decline in memory, language, problem-solving and other thinking skills, netizens couldn’t help but believe that Trump is suffering from the condition ...

https://www.ibtimes.com/donald-trump-coronavirus-quotes-potus-sparks-dementia-cognitive-decline-rumors-recent-2939977

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11. May exploit the crisis for authoritarian ends

Andrew Gawthorpe
... he’ll blame immigrants, journalists, people of color, liberals and other enemies
Sat 14 Mar 2020 05.30 EDT Last modified on Sat 14 Mar 2020 12.04 EDT

... Trump’s Oval Office address on coronavirus was terrifying because it revealed a man completely unmatched to the moment. Even though he was reading from a teleprompter, the president got the details of his major policy announcements wrong. He attempted no emotional connection with or comfort of the tens of millions of Americans whose lives are being upended by the threat of the disease. He didn’t even have anything useful to say about what his own top scientist has described as America’s “failing” testing regime, which has screened about as many people all year as South Korea does in a day. In a presidency accustomed to lows, this one was ..literally sickening ...

... His allies in the media are busy trying to downplay the virus, but anyone who switches over to a real news channel can see what is happening in Italy, where doctors feel forced to leave the elderly to die and hospitals are struggling to bury the dead. With estimates of the number of Americans who might require intensive care running into the millions and only about 45,000 ICU beds available in the US, similar scenes might soon be playing out at home.

When Trump and his allies can no longer lie or deny, we can expect them to move on to the next phase of their crisis management playbook: attacking their enemies. It is already clear that they intend to interpret the virus not primarily as an existential threat to millions of Americans, but as an existential threat to their own political power ...

... In a declared state of emergency, the president has extraordinary powers, including the ability to freeze an American’s finances and deprive them of the ability to legally work, to control digital communications, and to deploy the military domestically. Aside from these enumerated items, Trump has repeatedly shown that he anyway believes that there are no legal or constitutional limits on presidential authority ...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/14/trump-may-exploit-coronavirus-crisis

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12. White House doctor says Trump doesn't need coronavirus test

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/white-house-doctor-says-trump-doesn-t-need-coronavirus-test-n1158791

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13. Trump says he's likely to be tested for coronavirus

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/trump-says-hes-likely-to-be-tested-after-repeat-exposure/articleshow/74624172.cms

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14. Payroll tax cut won't stop coronavirus becoming a financial crisis

March 14, 2020, 4:40 AM EDT
By Laurence Kotlikoff, Boston University economist

... The World Health Organization has officially pronounced a pandemic, schools and universities are closing, retail customers are disappearing, nightlife is ending, restaurants are dying, airlines are canceling, supermarket shelves are emptying, the NBA is suspending, meetings aren't convening, Italy, in its entirety, is quarantining, no one from China or the European Union is coming, the stock market is plunging and armed troops are appearing ...

On Wednesday night, Trump addressed the nation in an attempt to calm fears, especially economic ones. He failed. A few hours later, the stock market plummeted once again. On Friday afternoon, he called a press conference and finally declared a national emergency — one step in the right direction. It's now time to throw away the president's rose-colored glasses for good and come clean about the health and economic ramifications of what we're facing. We are likely going to have a major recession, if not a depression. People are simply not going to put their lives on the line to get a paycheck, especially one that's as small as those of most workers ...

This came home to me this week. I went to our local supermarket and asked the young woman at the checkout counter whether she was scared of getting the virus. "Yes." Is the store giving you hand cleaner, gloves or some other way to be safe? "No."

In a few more day's time, the number of checkers — and shoppers — will be greatly reduced. So will the number of people riding in taxis, Ubers, Lifts, buses, trains or planes, let alone cruise ships. Sporting events and theater productions are being canceled — the closing of call centers and factories cannot be far behind ...

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-payroll-tax-cut-won-t-stop-coronavirus-becoming-financial-ncna1157176

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15. Seems to Think a Bunch of CEOs Will Save America From Coronavirus

By SETH MAXON

On Friday afternoon, Donald Trump announced in a Rose Garden press conference that he was declaring a national emergency, or in the president’s parlance, using “two very big words.” Invoking the Stafford Act, FEMA will now be able to help provide funding for state and local governments respond to the crisis. The move will allow $50 billion in federal funds to be spent on fighting the disease and its spread, he said.

But Trump was not alone on that stage. At the press conference, the president was flanked by, and ceded the microphone, to several .. private sector CEOs, who have offered to open up their businesses’ parking lots for “consumers” — in the language of the press conference — to receive drive-thru coronavirus tests ...

The government and nation are relying on the leadership of Trump—a person who reportedly doesn’t exercise because he believes that people are like batteries, in that they have finite energy—to stop the global biological plague from killing as many as 1 million Americans, as a former director of the CDC recently estimated it could. This president may not be exactly what the doctor ordered, but at least these corporations saw their stocks temporarily soar during a press conference in which Trump once again lied about the nation’s testing capabilities.

https://slate.com/business/2020/03/trump-thinks-ceos-will-save-america-from-coronavirus.html