Media chorus roots for Trump defeat over COVID-19 |
PLUS: “For Trump, Coronavirus Proves to Be an Enemy He Can’t Tweet Away” |
Headline Health – A range of leading news outlets is seeing not only catastrophic health and financial consequences from the spread of the coronavirus, but groundshaking political repercussions as well …
– The Coronavirus Is Coming for Trump’s Presidency
“Will a nationalist president be undone by his underreaction to a foreign threat?”
By Ross Douthat, New York Times, March 7, 2020
– Trump can’t handle a crisis he didn’t create
“The coronavirus is an enemy that cannot be wished away with happy talk … “
Max Boot, The Washington Post, March 7, 2020
– Trump’s ignorance was on public display during coronavirus meeting with pharmaceutical execs
“The president is pushing to get a Covid-19 vaccine before the election. It doesn’t work like that.”
By Aaron Rupar, Vox, Mar 3, 2020
– Stocks will plunge, Trump will lose the election, coronavirus will ‘shock’ the world
“The Democratic field is poor, but Trump is dead” – Economist Nouriel Roubini
Theron Mohamed, Business Insider, Mar. 2, 2020
– How Coronavirus Could Tank the Economy — and Trump’s Odds of Reelection
“A bear market could eat Trump alive.”
By Eric Levitz, New York magazine, March 2, 2020
– Coronavirus could cost Trump the election, Goldman Sachs warns
“If the coronavirus epidemic materially affects US economic growth it may increase the likelihood of Democratic victory in the 2020 election … ”
By Matt Egan, CNN Business, February 27, 2020
For Trump, Coronavirus Proves to Be an Enemy He Can’t Tweet Away
March 9, 2020
MSN.com, The New York Times, PALM BEACH, Fla. — Defending against criticism of his handling of the coronavirus, President Trump suggested the other day that he could hardly have been expected to be ready for such an unexpected crisis.
“Who would have thought?” he asked during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nerve center for the government’s response to the outbreak. “Who would have thought we would even be having the subject?”
Actually, quite a few people would have thought, and did — including the officials in his own White House who were in charge of preparing for just such a pandemic only to have their office shut down in a reorganization in 2018.
“The threat of pandemic flu is the No. 1 health security concern,” one of the officials said the day before that happened two years ago. “Are we ready to respond? I fear the answer is no.”
For a president who lives in the moment, rarely planning too far ahead, the coronavirus has proved to be a leadership challenge he was not prepared for either.
The outbreak that has rattled the nation does not respond to Mr. Trump’s favorite instruments of power: It cannot be cowed by Twitter posts, it cannot be shot down by drones, it cannot be overcome by party solidarity, it cannot be overpowered by campaign rally chants.
Mr. Trump, who is at his strongest politically when he has a human enemy to attack, has seemed less certain of how to take on an invisible killer … Read more.
