Imagine an alternate universe in which Trump posed as the defender of a unified nation against an unexpected threat, the way GW Bush did after 9/11 1/ nytimes.com/2020/02/28/us/…
Now the truth is that the pose of unity was a lie: we now know that Rumsfeld was thinking about how to use to attack to justify war in Iraq while the Pentagon was still burning, and Rs in Congress were trying to push thru tax cuts w/in 48 hours 2/
But it was a politically successful pose — some journalists still believe that there was a post-9/11 era of unity! — and to be fair it probably did help calm what might have been anti-Muslim panic 3/
But Trump didn't and probably couldn't do that. Personally, he's incapable of even pretending to be responsible and serious — I wouldn't trust him to feed my cat. And he consumes right-wing media that sees leftist conspiracy everywhere 4/
Also, a man who has lied 16K times since taking office probably couldn't sound credible even if he managed to tell the truth for once 5/ washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/…
So we enter a public-health crisis under leadership that has negative credibility: if Trump and co say something, people will assume, probably correctly, that it's false. 6/
