Our Corona Virus Frat Party President

Donald Trump is our very own frat party president when it comes to the Coronavirus outbreak. Less the semblance of any party fun.

If the rumors are true, Trump is going to pitch his re-election strategy to include the fantasy that his strategy against the Coronavirus has been “a success”. As we stand at present, 67,000 Americans have died from the virus, and counting, the economy is in a Trump-Twitter style melt-down and cities like New York and Jersey City find themselves in something akin to a post 9-11 lockdown on steroids, double espressos all round and pure fear. Some success.

Trump then casually announces that the Coronavirus mortality rate is going to jump another 30,000 or so to 100,000. But that’s somehow “ok” as it’s not as high as two million. Yet further success.

Of course, in the world of generalissimo Trump, everything he has ever done has been a success. And to a degree, that’s true. Russian collusion went very well, thank you very much. Hush money payments to porn stars? Yep, performed like clock-work. Helping his father to discriminate against black tenants in Trump owned properties? Exquisite. Walking in on Miss World contestants getting changed? Perfect timing. And so on to the point of nausea.

However, back here on Planet Normal, hundreds of millions of us see that the Trump administration’s response to the Coronavirus assault on the US was anything but a success. Landing on the moon was a success. Defeating Hitler and Imperial Japan was a success. Winning the Cold War was a success. In sharp contrast, losing more Americans to the Coronavirus than were lost in the Vietnam War is arguably the single worst definition of a success that any US president has ever overseen.

We’ve always known that Trump was incompetent – just think steaks, vodka, airlines, casinos or trying to read from a teleprompter. But dangerous? Outright dangerous? Stone cold bonkers we’re now in the midst of a twenty-first century version of the Black Death dangerous? Unfortunately, yes. Keep in mind that this is a guy who looked directly into a solar eclipse without any eye protection. Or how about the suggestion of trying to the stop a looming hurricane from hitting the US with the use of a nuclear bomb? Science, heck, even common sense, be damned. Makes those disinfectant injections sound slightly, only ever so slightly, less demented when you consider some of his previous announcements and behaviors.

.

There has been minimal federal guidance for each of the 50 states from the Trump administration other than “you’re on your own” and if it goes well, thank us; and if it doesn’t, what were you doing?

Let’s not also forget that of late we have also had to contend with the utterly detached musings of the President’s son-in-law and by some bizarre flaw in the laws of nature, “senior adviser”, Jared Kushner. Adding to the general sense of dismalness emanating from the White House during the pandemic, Kushner has echoed his clueless father-in-law by also asserting that the administration’s response has been a “success.” Cue a Capitol Hill fly-over by the four horsemen of the apocalypse by way of celebration.

The Coronavirus pandemic is the biggest existential threat to the US that actually, somehow, eclipses 9-11. Think the twin towers, Pearl Harbor and the Civil War all rolled into one. And then some. And then don’t forget this thing is invisible and up until not so long ago, and you choose, a hoax, going to miraculously vanish or could be solved with the ingestion of Clorox. All per the musings of the Great Hairstyle.

Never have the shortcomings of an American president been so glaringly obvious as with Trump and the Coronavirus pandemic. Body-bags are literally being filled by the day – with some estimates suggesting that we could very soon be in the 3000 deaths a day territory. Still though, his press briefings are getting “tremendous ratings” so it can’t be all bad then can it?

Can we really stand another four years of such dangerous buffoonery? The sad and terrifying reality is that Trump’s approach to the pandemic has about as much coherence as an out of control frat party and Trump is the chief jock handing out the beers and urging on the chaos.