Donald Trump is bringing his politics of personal grievance to his handling of the coronavirus crisis, and the personal grievances could have big effects on entire states as they cope with waves of sick and dying people. That’s because the personal grievances Trump seems most focused on right now are with governors—he’s literally threatening resources for entire states if he doesn’t think their governors have sucked up to him enough.
Trump isn’t particularly subtle about it, either. “We are doing very well with, I think, almost all of the governors, for the most part,” he said on Fox News on Tuesday. “But you know, it’s a two-way street. They have to treat us well.” As if the health of entire states should boil down to personal relationships between governors and presidents, because apparently millions of Americans don’t matter.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer are currently on Trump's pout list for calling on the federal government to do more and refusing to suck up. Inslee is “always complaining,” Trump said—after Inslee told him “We don’t need a backup. We need a Tom Brady”—and Whitmer, whose name Trump could not remember during a call to Fox News, “is a new governor and it’s not been pleasant.” For Whitmer’s part, she said, “I can’t afford to have a fight with the White House.”
Several governors who have often been Trump critics have made the calculation that their states need them to brownnose. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for instance, said Trump was “on top of” improved testing, which … okay. But this is not Newsom’s first rodeo with Trump’s ego during a disaster. Trump threatened wildfire relief for California last year.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, too, has gone with praising Trump to get the needed help from him, and it’s helped—to a point. Trump is still questioning the need for ventilators. So one problem with sucking up is that you’re still dealing with Trump’s ignorance. And the amount of sucking up Cuomo has been able to muster isn’t always enough for Trump’s bottomless need for ego reward, as the entire country saw when Trump tried to get Dr. Deborah Birx to break from public health analysis to criticize Cuomo.
In short, the United States is in the middle of a pandemic, deaths are rising, and the federal government is being run not to keep the most people safe but to boost one man’s ego.
