For Donald Trump, the pandemic has been not so extraordinary after all. Because all he’s had to do is exercise the skill he’s worked at all his life—blaming others for his personal failures. That’s included propping up conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus and condemning the World Health Organization for doing exactly what they are intended to do. But all that is not enough, because Trump was getting daily, sometimes hourly, updates from intelligence agencies warning about the increasing threat of the pandemic for months—months in which he kept on golfing, holding rallies, and saying it would all just go away “like magic.”
But Trump has found a scapegoat even among the intelligence community. Shockingly (in a completely unshocking way) that scapegoat is an experienced woman.
For Donald Trump, the COVID-19 pandemic has called for serious action and assigning responsibility. Not in the sense that Trump has done anything to slow the spread of disease, manage testing, or coordinate the response. After all, Trump made it very clear he wasn’t about to be in charge of testing in a parking lot. And he certainly wasn’t about to take personal responsibility for anything, ever.
However, Trump’s pointing finger has gotten a serious workout, between directing blame at China, at the WHO, and at Democratic governors left to pick up the wreckage in the wake of a nonexistent federal response. As The New York Times reports, Trump has found the finger strength to also direct blame toward career intelligence analyst Beth Sanner, who has the most unrewarding job in all of intelligence work — trying to get Donald Trump to listen to his daily briefing.
Saying that he wasn’t concerned because Sanner apparently failed to add enough red letters or pictures of scary monsters on his daily briefing sheets doesn’t address the fact that there were numerous special meetings and frequent memos across January and February. Meetings and memos in which Trump was given increasingly dire warnings by epidemiologists, scientists, military strategists, biodefense experts, the HHS secretary, CDC officials, and intelligence officials who outranked Sanner.
But sure. Trump has focused blame on the woman who failed to come into his office humming the Jaws theme. It’s all her fault.
In particular, Trump has focused on a briefing Sanner prepared for January 23 in which Trump claims the virus was presented as “no big deal.” No big deal except for the fact that this meeting came five days after he’d already been given a briefing on the unfolding crisis in China and warned about the need to prepare the nation. That was far from the only time. Both before and after that January 23 briefing, Trump was warned repeatedly about the scope of the looming threat. And repeatedly, Trump refused to listen. Instead, he insisted on downplaying the threat to the public, bragging about the stock market, and going on with his frequent golf trips and rallies.
Trump’s failure to respond is symptomatic of several things. First, Trump would always, always, always, rather just pretend that he’s done something, and brag about it, than actually take any action. That’s just how he saved the steel industry, brought back coal, and gave America the best water and air ever … by not doing any of those things. It’s not that Trump failed to take action about COVID-19 in particular, it’s that Trump rarely takes any action at all. His energy on any topic extends only so far as it takes to Tweet out a claim that it’s already done.
It’s also an emblem of not just his hatred for intelligence agencies, but his inability to listen to any voice that isn’t engaged in singing his praises. According to the Times, interviews with a series of intelligence experts saddled with the task of briefing Trump were uniform in their assessment that keeping him listening was more difficult that holding the attention of a toddler. Trump “veers off on tangents” and refuses to get back to the topic of the briefing. He has a short attention span. He never reads the reports prepared for him—apparently even when those reports have been pared down to one page. With pictures.
Instead, Trump counters information given to him by conspiracy theories he’s gotten on phone calls, or things that he heard on Fox News. Above all, when confronted by information that doesn’t mesh with what he already believed, Trump simply dismisses it out of hand. It’s a problem so bad, that intelligence agencies have actually hired consultants to asks them how they can make their pablum soft enough for Trump’s digestion.
The answer is: you can’t. As the hydroxychloroquine incident shows, Trump cannot change his mind. He does not learn. Once he has an idea in his head, it is the idea, and can’t be ousted no matter how much expertise is levied, or how many deaths prove otherwise.
Trump can’t be taught. He can only be expelled. The sooner the better.