People hold up campaign signs as they wait for a rally for President Donald Trump to begin at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. Photo / AP
People hold up campaign signs as they wait for a rally for President Donald Trump to begin at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. Photo / AP
Opinion
COMMENT:
Donald Trump could have used last week's Republican National Convention to neutralise the most serious criticism of his presidency.
Instead, mystifyingly, the President chose to prove Joe Biden's point for him.
"Our current President has failed in his most basic duty to the nation. He has failed to protect us. He's failed to protect America. And my fellow Americans, that is unforgivable," the Democratic nominee said during his own convention earlier this month.
Biden was referring to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed 186,000 Americans so far. That death toll, easily the worst in the world, will pass 200,000 before election day.
Trump is obviously not responsible for the virus's existence, but he is responsible for how the US government has dealt with it.
At the Republican convention, his party did its best to make that response look good.
That effort included prerecorded videos praising the President's actions (such as his partial ban on travellers from China), speeches from a handful of medical professionals, and some boldly ironic criticism of Democratic state governors for downplaying the threat of the epidemic in its early weeks.
I should stress here that some of those governors absolutely deserve to be panned.
I'm particularly thinking of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. It was nauseating to watch Cuomo brag about his own coronavirus response at the Democratic convention, when the evidence shows several thousand deaths could have been prevented if he'd acted sooner.
People wait for President Donald Trump to arrive at a campaign rally at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. Photo / AP
That said, curiously, no one at the Republican convention saw fit to mention any of the times Trump himself had downplayed the virus, which he kept doing months into the pandemic.
"We're going very substantially down, not up."
"We could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time."
"It's going to disappear. One day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear."
You probably know all the President's greatest hits by now, so I won't bore you with an exhaustive list.
What else did the Republicans try? Ah yes, they argued no one could have known how serious the pandemic would become.
"No one person, and no one place, could have anticipated the challenges that Covid would bring. But President Trump has faced all these obstacles head-on," said Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White, conveniently ignoring the fact several other countries actually did a pretty decent job of anticipating those challenges.
My favourite example came from Trump's chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow, who had the gall to speak about the virus in the past tense.
People cheer as President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. Photo / AP
"It was awful. Health and economic impacts were tragic. Hardship and heartbreak were everywhere. But presidential leadership came swiftly and effectively with an extraordinary rescue for health and safety to successfully fight the Covid virus," Kudlow said.
Was awful? The impacts were tragic? Leadership came swiftly?
The virus is still awful. Its impacts are ongoing. And presidential leadership is still required just as much today as it was in February or March.
Let's be frank about the situation here. The US continues to record more than 40,000 new infections each day, and more than 1000 deaths.
Trump's job isn't done, and for reasons fathomable only to him, he still isn't doing it.
The images below come from two events Trump held in recent days – his convention speech on the White House's South Lawn, and a campaign rally with supporters in New Hampshire the next day.
See whether you can spot the rather glaring problem.
There were about 1500 people at the President's convention speech, and by my eye, a few thousand at his New Hampshire rally.
All of them were crammed together like sardines. There was no hint whatsoever of social distancing, and very few people wore masks.
Masks are actually required at such events under an executive order from New Hampshire's Republican Governor, Chris Sununu. When an announcer asked the crowd to don masks in accordance with that order, it responded by booing and jeering.
How did Trump handle this situation? Did he encourage his supporters to put their masks on? Did he ask them to step away from each other and practise social distancing, for the safety of both themselves and others?
No. When he took the stage, the President bragged about the event being overcapacity.
"I said why aren't they here? 'Sir, we couldn't let them in.' 'Why not? Oh, let's let them in.' These people," he said.
President Donald Trump listens during a briefing about Hurricane Laura with first responders at the emergency operations centre. Photo / AP
The tone doesn't quite come through on paper, so to be clear, that last remark about "these people" was a mocking reference to the lowly officials tasked with keeping the crowd within the safety guidelines.
Incidentally, Trump went on to muse, without evidence, that the virus was "probably sent in by China" deliberately.
"Who the hell knows how it got here?" he said.
But let's put the President's usual conspiracy mongering aside. There are bigger concerns.
By holding events like this, and allowing his supporters to gather in large numbers without taking precautions against the virus's transmission, Trump is failing to protect them. In fact it's worse than that – he is actively putting them in danger.
No small number of the attendees at these two events were in the age group known to be most vulnerable to the disease. They were sitting and standing in close proximity to total strangers. If these people catch the virus, they might not survive it.
Does Trump care? Apparently not. Perhaps he thinks having an impressive crowd for the cameras is more important.
It is incomprehensible. Trump is acting as though the pandemic is over. He's proudly posting photos of the crowds online, and pressuring governors to reopen their states, when his most basic job is to protect American lives.
The existing damage from the virus cannot be undone. None of the 186,000 dead Americans can be brought back. But Trump could at least do the right thing now, and try to prove Biden wrong.
No, I want Big Ten, and all other football, back - NOW. The Dems don’t want football back, for political reasons, but are trying to blame me and the Republicans. Another LIE, but this is what we are up against! They should also open up all of their Shutdown States.
It is astonishing to me how often politicians – from both sides – fail to realise that the simplest path to re-election is to do their job well. Basking in success is a heck of a lot easier than trying to spin failure.
If Trump had dealt with the virus swiftly and decisively from the beginning, if he had done what was necessary to protect Americans from its spread, then he would likely be coasting to re-election right now.
President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally. Photo / AP
All the sins and controversies of the past three years would have been forgiven, or at least forgotten. Trump would have got credit for successfully confronting the biggest challenge of his presidency.
But no. Trump repeatedly downplayed the threat of the virus, because he didn't want to spook the stock market. He pretended it would go away. He waited too long to implement widespread testing; too long to impose social distancing. He sent mixed messages on masks. He contradicted his own government's health experts. He promoted unproven treatments. He tried to reopen prematurely, before the epidemic was under control.
Even now, heading into September, the President still isn't taking the virus seriously enough.
"No one will be safe in Biden's America," Trump said during his convention speech.
Trump's America is already unsafe. Maybe he should focus on fixing that.
