Nothing is ever impeached president Donald Trump’s fault. Ever. Not even a global pandemic than ran amok in the United States as he sat by and did zero to mitigate its effects.
But having already surpassed the death toll from the Vietnam War, and zooming past the 60,000-death marker that Trump originally claimed would constitute “a good job” and a “10 out of 10,” he and his party have now decided the best course of action moving into election season is … to blame China. But isn’t that just admitting that Trump can’t protect America from foreign attack? Isn’t that the president’s number one job?
Of course, Trump has been all over the map on China. Remember, he embraced the conservative racist term for the disease early on, calling it the “China virus.” Then he had a talk with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and that was that. Time and time again, he seems to flop around on China even as his party and the conservative movement remain united in their desire to blame that country for Trump’s mismanagement.
But for now, the Republican Senate campaign arm is all aboard, telling its candidates, “Don’t defend Trump, other than the China Travel Ban—attack China.” Conservative media is certainly happy about having something to attack. Defending Trump is a losing cause. Best to deflect. Reality doesn’t need to get in the way. There are plenty of conspiracy theories to promote.
Yet we know that Trump had access to dozens of intelligence briefings warning of the pandemic’s spread. He didn’t care. He eliminated the pandemic preparedness task force. He slashed the Center for Disease Control’s budget. He literally did nothing except claim, day after day, that the disease would soon be gone. “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done," Trump said back on February 27. Instead, we’re over 1 million cases and still climbing.
His one action, the only action he can point to, was closing the border to China. Except even that was riddled with holes, as Americans were still able to fly back and forth, bringing with them a virus that was 1) already in the country anyway, and 2) was flooding in from Europe into the country’s East Coast. He couldn't even get his xenophobia right.
But assuming Trump can stay on message and keep blaming China (debatable), what exactly is the argument? That Trump was unable to handle an attack from China, and that his mismanagement and incompetence cost the lives of more people than the entire Vietnam War? Heck, by summer we should be at 100,000 dead, and still counting as we face a likely second wave.
So is he really going to campaign on having failed the most important test an American president will ever face—responding to a foreign adversary?
And if he couldn’t handle this mythical Chinese attack as well as other countries did (see South Korea), why should he get rewarded for his incompetence with reelection? If his story was true, then it would be yet another reason to elect Joe Biden instead.
Bottom line, Trump didn’t keep Americans safe. It doesn’t matter if the pandemic was a force of nature or a targeted malicious attack. In the end, over 100,000 Americans will likely die because Trump wasn’t up to the task of dealing with the crisis. The end.