Trump addressed the country on Friday to declare an emergency condition in the country due to the spreading pandemic of the coronavirus. Afterwards, he took questions. One of those questions from the reporters was about the delay in availability of virus testing and did the president take responsibility for that?
Trump’s response was: “Yeah, I don't take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time that wasn't meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we're talking about.”
That boldened part of the response really got to me. In my opinion, a leader never says, I don’t take responsibility at all. After all isn’t that his job? I don’t expect him to administer the tests himself, but a real leader would admit the error and say how it would be improved. But then again, Trump downplayed the seriousness of the disease for weeks. Taking responsibility would be admitting error. Of course, he never does. So I guess it’s within his character.