6 NEWS Controversy of the week
Trump: Can he recover from bungling the pandemic?
“It took a stock market crash,” and a per-
sonal intervention from Fox News host Tucker
Carlson, but it seems President Trump has finally
“snapped out of coronavirus delusion mode,”
said Jonathan Swan in Axios.com. Trump’s
public remarks on the pandemic had a new
seriousness this week, and he laid out dramatic
new measures to blunt the human and economic
impact of coronavirus in the U.S. The ques-
tion is whether the shift came too late to save
his presidency. Clearly, said Peter Wehner in
TheAtlantic.com, it came far too late. Thousands
of Americans are about to die because for three long months, as the
virus raged through Asia and then Europe, Trump “brazenly denied
reality” since he saw it as a threat to the booming stock market and
his re-election. Insisting the virus was no worse than the flu and
“totally under control,” he missed a critical window to ramp up
our medical infrastructure and actively resisted widespread public
testing because, in his words, “I like the numbers where they are.”
The numbers are now rising dramatically, and the crisis has exposed
our overwhelmed narcissist-in-chief as “fundamentally unfit—
intellectually, morally, temperamentally, and psychologically—for
office.” His administration will “stagger on” until January 2021,
but in every meaningful sense “the Trump presidency is over.”
“Trump can’t win” with the media, said Rachel Alexander in
TownHall.com. When he banned travel from China early on in
the outbreak, a move that saved countless American lives, “he was
accused of being racist.” Trump-hating critics nitpick everything he
says and does, so as to buttress the narrative that “Trump is unfit!”
Trump is unfit, said Alex Shephard in NewRepublic.com. But his
unfitness was also exposed by impeachment, Russiagate, and count-
less other scandals that should have ended his presidency but didn’t.
Trump is a survivor—a “political cockroach,”
and recent history “should give the prophets of
Trump’s downfall pause.”This pandemic is of a “completely different
political magnitude” than anything Trump has
faced before, said Jonathan Chait in NYMag.
com. It was easy for Americans to tune out
“Trump’s continuous din of scandals and
gaffes” when they were confined to newspa-
pers, Twitter, and TV screens. But a public
health emergency, coupled with the collapse
of our economy, is going to have a “tangible impact on the lives
of Americans.” When paychecks disappear and the hospitals and
morgues overflow, Trump’s failures will be “so blatant that even
his own supporters will notice.” For critical weeks, Trump was
a passive and willfully ignorant bystander to an unfolding disas-
ter, insisting the virus would just “go away,” said David Frum in
TheAtlantic.com. As president, he owns responsibility for the slow
U.S. response to the pandemic. “He cannot escape it, and he will
not escape it.”Politically, Trump still has “time on his side,” said David Siders
in Politico.com. If through a combination of luck, science, and
national resolve we avoid the worst-case death tolls, and if a mas-
sive federal stimulus heads off economic catastrophe, then the
pandemic could actually “help him in November.” For three long
months that we can’t get back, the president “failed to rise to the
challenge of leadership,” said NationalReview.com in an editorial,
“and it does no one any favors to pretend otherwise.” But a presi-
dent’s fate is tied to his nation’s. Even the “partisan adversaries”
convinced that Trump is incapable of leading us through the diffi-
cult months ahead should be praying that he “proves them wrong.”Only in America
QNevada’s legalized sex
workers say that, so far at
least, the pandemic has been
good for business. Roxanne
Price, 25, theorized that
coronavirus fear is reminding
people that “life is short” and
causing those with “sexual
goals to visit sex workers like
me sooner rather than later.”
QAn Oregon police de-
partment is asking the
public not to dial 911 just
because they’ve run out of
toilet paper. In a post on its
Facebook page, the New-
port PD warned citizens that
“we cannot bring you toilet
paper” and reminded them
that “history offers many
other options for you in your
time of need.” Among the
historical examples cited: the
ancient Mayans, who “used
corn cobs,” and seamen of
yore, who “used old rope
and anchor lines soaked in
salt water.”Judge blocks major
food stamp cuts
A federal judge blocked
the Trump administration
last week from forcing an
estimated 688,000 adults off
of food stamps, arguing that
the rule changes would be
disastrous amid the fallout
from coronavirus. Nineteen
states sued the Department
of Agriculture over a proposal
that would require able-bod-
ied, childless adults to work at
least 20 hours a week in order
to qualify for food stamps af-
ter three months. States could
only waive the requirement
where the unemployment
rate is above the national
average, and no lower than
6 percent. The USDA wanted
the changes to take effect
April 1 despite the coronavirus
crisis, but District Judge Beryl
Howell of Washington, D.C.,
imposed an injunction, saying
the changes are “likely unlaw-
ful because they are arbitrary
and capricious.”Health and safety, after the official ISIS newspaper al-Naba
advised its scattered army of martyrdom-seeking terrorists to avoid
Europe, “the land of the epidemic,” for fear of catching coronavi-
rus, a “torment sent by God on whomsoever He wills.”
Loggers, whose odds of contracting Covid-19 is the lowest of any
of hundreds of professions analyzed by The New York Times. The
nation’s 4,680 tree fallers enjoy so much well-ventilated personal
space on the job that they are at lower risk of infection than even
our 11,620 “painters, sculptors, and illustrators.”
Retirement planning, with reports that Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell has been reaching out to senior conservative
judges and urging them to consider quitting so they can be replaced
while the White House and Senate are still in Republican hands.Second acts, after Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and vice
presidential candidate, appeared on Fox’s The Masked Singer in a
pink bear costume and rapping “Baby Got Back,” Sir Mix-a-Lot’s
legendary homage to “big butts.”
The poor and the homely, whose contributions to TikTok, the
Chinese video-sharing app, after he platform’s moderators were
told to filter out videos by “ugly’’ people and those whose homes
had “old and disreputable decorations.”
The Coronas, an Irish indie-rock band that cancelled its concerts
because of the pandemic. “We were chatting to some other bands
out here in the same boat,” said frontman Danny O’Reilly. “I was
like, ‘Yeah, but at least you’re not named after the virus.’”Good week for:
Bad week for:
APWe have the virus ‘totally under control’