February 26, 2020

Feb 27, 2020

Today began with Trump tweeting. “Low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) & @CNN are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible. Likewise their incompetent Do Nothing Democrat comrades are all talk, no action. USA in great shape!”

Molly Jong-Fast, editor at the Daily Beast mused: Does anyone think it’s weird that Trump is so offended by #COVID-19. He thinks it’s a personal affront instead of a Public health emergency.”

Freelance writer Sheila Quirke nailed the answer: “Textbook narcissist. He is the center of all things, so, of course, a growing global pandemic is about him. This is true of ALL things and will not change. From his POV, the world, people, all things are only experienced in relationship to him being centered.”

Trump cannot see that there is good reason to be concerned about a pandemic, and that its effect on economic production will ripple through international markets. The drive to be prepared for the onslaught of the disease so that we weather it in the best way possible must be a personal attack on him.

Yesterday, the White House briefed Congress on its response to the coronavirus, but classified it, so members could not talk about it. Those who heard it were unimpressed on a bipartisan basis. Trump was also mad that Dr. Nancy Messonnier, a top official from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention who is handling the coronavirus, said it was not a question of whether, but of when, the virus would hit the United States. “She never should have said that,” a senior administration official told Washington correspondent for CNBC Eamon Javers. “It’s bad.”

Today talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing commentators attacked Messonnier because it turns out she is Rod Rosenstein's sister. Rosenstein was the deputy Attorney General who took over the Russia investigation when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself because he was implicated in the scandal. Rosenstein is a Republican who was nominated to be the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland by Trump himself. But because he appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller, another Republican, Trump has redefined him as an enemy, and today Trump’s supporters are trying to undercut his sister’s warnings about the coronavirus by saying that she is part of a deep state trying to tank the markets to weaken Trump.

And, indeed, Trump is deeply worried about the stock market, which lost more ground today and whose futures are already set to drop more than 300 points tomorrow. This reflects the news tonight that the United States has its first case of the disease that is a possible result of “community spread,” that is, we don’t know exactly where it came from. This would indicate a wider spread of the disease than we are currently aware of. The coronavirus has hit the world economy as quarantines in Asia have weakened supply chains, and those losses are gradually moving their way into manufacturing and supply here in America (as well as other countries). As the disease runs its course, the slowdown in manufacturing and the movement of goods will slow down economic growth everywhere.

Trump is worried about the dropping stock market because his strongest hope for reelection is a good economy, which he insisted the booming stock market showed. While many observers worried that a high stock market alone does not a healthy economy make, as people are working three jobs to make ends meet and 40% of Americans cannot find $400 for an emergency, the stock market was his go-to proof that things were good. If that drops, his best argument for reelection disappears. If he is not reelected, he is no longer protected from criminal indictment by the power of the presidential office, and many people—I am one—think this looms huge in his mind.

So an expression of concern about the coronavirus, which is hurting international markets (as well as killing people), by his definition is an attack on him by hostile Democrats or the Deep State. Tonight, Trump came to the briefing room podium for the second time in his presidency to defend his handling of the coronavirus, insisting his administration had handled it extremely well. He took the opportunity to call House Speaker Nancy Pelosi incompetent and partisan and to complain about Minority Leader Chuck Schumer while also insisting that his own poll numbers were terrific.

I have had an extremely long day (it’s midterms week) but my read on all this is that Trump is frightened that the weakening of the economy on the news of spreading coronavirus will tank his reelection, and he is circling the wagons to try to look strong. But, unlike Trump’s former opponents, the coronavirus cannot be bullied, and Americans worried by it will not believe it is “fake news” no matter how often Rush Limbaugh tells them it is a hoax by the fictional Deep State.

With this backdrop, Trump’s purging of experts he perceives as disloyal and his attempt to silence critics makes him look incompetent and weak. Tonight he announced he was putting Vice President Mike Pence in charge of handling the coronavirus preparedness, but he apparently didn’t mention that to Health and Human Services Secretary Alexander Azar, who is in charge of the task force addressing the coronavirus, until minutes before the press conference. After it, Azar took the microphone to assure reporters he was still in charge of the task force.

News broke this week of a new hire at the White House: a man who is a college senior is working for another man who used to be the president’s personal assistant (and who was fired by then-Chief of Staff John Kelley) in the office of Presidential Personnel, responsible for screening and hiring thousands of employees. These men are central to the Trump purge of those he considers disloyal, but that a college senior and a previously fired personal assistant are in charge of a White House office suggests that the caliber of the president’s team is not as high as presidential teams have been in the past.

Also today, news broke that Trump’s reelection campaign has sued the New York Times for defamation, accusing it of “a systematic pattern of bias” designed to prevent him from winning in 2020. It claims the Times is in league with the Democratic Party, and it suggested that an op-ed published in March 2019 was false because the New York Times must have known about the forthcoming Mueller Report of April 2019. This is a clear call to Trump’s base, and will likely not be resolved before the election, but it strikes me as a terribly weak move.

It is, though, an attack on the freedom of the press, and is notable for that, if nothing else. Even more disturbing is today’s announcement that the Department of Justice has created a new section to take citizenship away from naturalized citizens found to be “Terrorists, War Criminals, Sex Offenders, and Other Fraudsters.” The government has stripped naturalized war criminals on so on of citizenship since WWII, including more than 300 former Nazis and 107 others for war crimes. What is new here is that the DOJ is creating a special section for this denaturalization, suggesting there will be widespread denaturalization occurring, and that they are including “Other Fraudsters.” In their example of such “fraudsters,” they note four people who claimed to be a family to gain admission to the United States. This sure seems like it’s a door to start stripping naturalized citizens of their status, another anti-immigrant policy that should appeal to Trump’s base.

As Trump becomes more and more concerned about his reelection, we can expect to see more and more of this kind of base appeal. We can also be fairly certain that his loyalists are not able to handle the coronavirus.

And on that note: Just as I finished this tonight, news broke that the patient who got the disease from community spread was transferred to the UC Davis Medical Center where the doctors asked the patient be tested for COVID-19. Since the patient did not meet the current criteria for the virus, the request was denied. When the test was performed three days later, it was positive. Ouch.

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Notes:

Jong-Fast and Quirke: