Just weeks ago, Donald Trump and Republicans were looking forward to a campaign season of skewering Democrats for steering us toward the brink of socialism. In fact, they were particularly giddy about the idea of running against self-identified democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
But as Trump finally realized he couldn't gaslight America or the stock market on the economic and public health calamity quickly gripping the nation, Trump and even some GOP lawmakers are suddenly co-opting the policies espoused by many of their Democratic rivals at a breakneck pace. After decades of placing their exclusive faith in manipulating the tax code to encourage corporations and consumers alike into certain behaviors while discouraging others (often to no good end), Trump and some Republicans are now proposing ideas such as sending citizens money directly and putting certain restrictions on corporate bailouts.
At Friday's coronavirus briefing, Trump virtually admitted that the GOP's giant corporate tax giveaway of 2017 hadn't done much to help American workers.
"I never like stock buybacks," Trump told a reporter who had asked about restricting them in a potential stimulus package. "When we did a big tax cut and when [corporations] took the money and did buybacks—thats's not building a hangar, that's not buying aircraft, that's not doing the kind of things that I want them to do."
Then, in a move that mirrors almost exactly what Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been preaching about banning buybacks, Trump offered, "I am fine with restricting buybacks. I don't want them taking hundreds of millions of dollars and buy back their stock because that does nothing."
Head-spinning, to be sure.
And then there's the idea of skipping over the middleman and simply putting cash in the pockets of consumers, which again appears to be making for strange bedfellows.
“Both the White House and the Democrats tend to believe that helping workers affected by the shutdown with direct cash payments is the best and is the right strategy,” Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia told Politico. “Now, not every Republican likes that idea. Some do.”
Of course, Trump's back is against the wall after he completely bungled the first couple months of the federal response to the pandemic. Testing kits for the virus—the most essential weapon in battling any pandemic—are still a total scarcity in the United States. The prospect of electoral disaster in November seems to have clarified at least some of the thinking in the West Wing. "Top officials hope these moves will help rehabilitate Trump as he comes under assault for his faltering approach to the novel coronavirus over the past two months — with troubles continuing to this date," Politico reports.
Trump even embraced the idea of being a so-called “wartime president” just days after his leading 2020 rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, introduced the idea during the Democratic debate. “This is like a war,” Biden declared Sunday night, explaining how he would handle a coronavirus response.
But one place Trump will never be able to gloss over his deficits falls into the category of the fundamental leadership skills people expect from a president in times of crisis: taking responsibility and offering the country comfort.
Trump’s "I don't take responsibility at all" will live in infamy, even as he seeks to cast himself as a "wartime president."
And on Friday, NBC's Peter Alexander asked, “What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?”
“I say that you’re a terrible reporter,” Trump replied. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself."