Thread, and I think “preference” is so important here. How Trump approaches these kinds of problems is:
- use it to confirm xenophobia and the need for border control
- only other countries are having a problem
- we’re great
- anyone who says otherwise is lying and disloyal
- use it to confirm xenophobia and the need for border control
- only other countries are having a problem
- we’re great
- anyone who says otherwise is lying and disloyal
Like OP says, this wasn’t any kind of intentional cover-up. It was in significant part about an approach and an worldview being pushed from the top down, and strong discouragement toward raising any kind of alarm or suggesting that anything isn’t totally under control.
Merely because Trump doesn’t like it. Trump doesn’t like anything that makes him look like he isn’t totally on top of things, anything that smacks even vaguely of failure, and especially anything that spooks the stock market.
But this has such ironic consequences.
But this has such ironic consequences.
He desperately doesn’t want to look like he’s incompetent or that anything is out of control—and his desperation leads directly to him hiring and retaining incompetent boot-lickers and letting things get out of control.
He could just, y’know, handle this competently.
He could just, y’know, handle this competently.
Which is why when he says EVERYTHING IS FINE the stock market doesn’t listen. Maybe they like his tax cuts but they’re not fools and generally they’re also not irrational, and they know this guy is an incompetent liar and what he says should be disregarded.
Which is why this is such an unusual crisis: like so many other people have been noting, he can’t lie his way out of it. He can’t actually convince anyone whose opinion matters to his situation that everything is fine because they already know not to believe him.
The courts can’t save him, the Senate can’t save him, executive orders can’t save him, literally nothing he’s likely to do will make it better and he’s in fact likely to make it all worse.
And because we’re testing now, the number of cases is going to skyrocket.
And because we’re testing now, the number of cases is going to skyrocket.
And that’s not a cause for panic, that skyrocketing number, because all it means is that we’re able to see what was already there. But people in aggregate are incapable of nuance so that skyrocketing number will still probably freak a lot of them out.
And I’d bet it *will* still probably be accompanied by a significantly growing number of people who are symptomatic, and many of them will get sick enough to need hospitalization, and more people will die. So in the context of that number it’ll *seem* a lot worse.
I’m pretty confident, for whatever my confidence is worth, that state and local institutions will handle this okay and will be competent on the ground, but at the federal level? When it comes to his appointees? And Trump himself has zero credibility.
This is going to explode no matter what he does and again, nothing he’s likely to do will make any of it better and will probably make it worse. And he’s never faced that before, at least not like this.
And if he just stopped Trumping for five fucking minutes and actually did what every one of his instincts is screaming at him not to do, he’d probably calm a lot of it down and slow whatever plunging his precious stock market will do.
He *does* have the ability to do a huge amount to mitigate the political damage to himself. But not a single one of his inclinations will let him. It’s an extraordinary example of self-sabotage.
That Trump isn’t *dead or in jail*, let alone the president, is the purest example of failing upward that I think I’ve ever seen.
Oh, and: I’m not a virologist or an epidemiologist but I’ve seen a number of them note how the Spanish flu dropped off in summer and then came roaring back in the fall and killed most of the people it killed. And it’s entirely possible this will behave the same way.
Not that it’ll kill a ton of people but that it’ll appear to largely go away over the summer and then cases explode again in the fall, in line with conventional flu season. Not catastrophic but not great.
But if it does that, you won’t see any admission of it on his part.
But if it does that, you won’t see any admission of it on his part.
He’ll have declared overwhelming victory over the summer and STRONGLY DISCOURAGED any attempt on anyone’s part to prepare for a resurgence or even suggest that a resurgence is possible.
Which means he’ll be totally unprepared to handle said resurgence.
Which means he’ll be totally unprepared to handle said resurgence.
And if it does do this—and I want to stress that this is *wild* speculation, all I know is that it’s possible that it will and I can’t speak to probability—think about the timing of that resurgence.
This is going to be an interesting year.
This is going to be an interesting year.
I mean, yeah, there’s this just to start with
