Reporting from The Washington Post adds more details to the story of the White House’s botched response to the coronavirus threat to date. I described a couple days ago how Donald Trump’s concern with re-election has been the prism through which he views this crisis, distorting his priorities and contributing to his propagation of disinformation about the challenge we collectively face. The Post article provides more details on this obsession, but also crucially details the basic incompetence that has plagued his and his team’s response.
The decision to name Vice President Mike Pence as coordinator of the coronavirus response effort also looks worse the more we learn about it. The Post notes that, unlike previous administrations, Trump declined to name a “czar” to handle this health emergency, and goes on to report, “The president decided against that option after worrying that bringing in a person from outside the administration might be seen as a failure — and wondering whether such a person would be loyal to him, according to those familiar with the debate.” Though at this late stage of his presidency it’s no surprise that the president would worry more about perceptions of his own failure and requirements of loyalty from subordinates, in this emergency context such tendencies come across as simply deranged. Moreover, even some of Pence advisers wondered “whether having Pence in charge was a good idea, given the the messy situation and a lack of experience in his office on the topic.”
The article also reports that some Republican senators have been criticizing the administration response and lack of preparedness; yet some of these same senators were in office while the administration made the cutbacks to the U.S. pandemic response infrastructure that are now plaguing current efforts. Where was the GOP when it had a chance to help prevent these foolish decisions? While from a political perspective it’s tentatively encouraging to see them willing to criticize Trump, we can’t ignore their hypocrisy and cynicism in speaking out now rather than years ago.
The piece also offers a good summation of the president’s various misstatements and lies about the spread and threat of the virus, though they are scattered throughout the article, which has the effect of downplaying the consistency of his efforts to dissemble about the threat facing the United States. Most jaw-dropping to me is his statement Thursday that, “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” This may be the clearest evidence yet that the president, faced with an implacable reality, would rather convince himself and others of fantasy scenarios in which all will be right with the world, rather than confront necessary challenges head-on.
Writing at the New Republic, Ryu Spaeth zeroes in on what may be behind this possible self-delusion on the part of the president. He says that beyond the basic fact of Trump’s instinct to spread disinformation, there has been “a strong whiff of wish fulfillment in all [his] strenuous assertions” about the threat of the coronavirus, and that “his response also reveals a deep unease, a recognition on Trump’s part, through the apocalyptic swirl of his own paranoia, that the coronavirus represents a very real threat to his presidency.” Spaeth correctly notes the threat Trump sees in an economic downturn driven by the coronavirus; the reference to Trump’s tone of “wish fulfillment” gets at the fact that at a basic, undeniable level, Trump understands reality quite well. Indeed, the more threatening that reality is, the more incentive he has both to delude himself and to convince the rest of us of his own delusions. I think that he realizes his own unfitness for the presidency, and is panicked by his growing peril, which raises the possibility of further flailing missteps and doubling down on what has been operating model for three years — relying on disinformation and propaganda to hide his shortcomings.
In the face of the threat of the virus and the president’s well-established incompetence, criticism of the president is well-warranted and necessary, as our best chance to hold him accountable and force as much of a course correction as possible. Of course, to the president and his defenders, there is no distinction possible between attempts to hold him accountable for doing the job he was elected to do, and fantastical theories of a vast media-liberal-deep state conspiracy to destroy his presidency by any means necessary. The idea that any criticism of Trump is always and ever unmerited may have begun as an authoritarian political strategy, but at this stage, when it blinds him and his defenders to the political risks of downplaying a threat that cannot ultimately be covered up by lies and propaganda, it has evolved into something indistinguishable from paranoia.