Like a cartoon dog in a burning room or a river in Egypt, we know Trump will spend his post-presidency looking for the real reasons he lost the election.
America faces no issue more pressing than thecoronaviruspandemic, and so the president has found the message that he believes will carry him to reelection. It goes something like this:
Everything is fine. The pandemic is no big deal, and anyone who says otherwise is lying.
We could call this “denial,” but that doesn’t begin to describe it. Because not only are we in the horrific situation we’re in because of President Trump, in the last week before the electionhe’s actively trying to make it worse.
One week to go, and Trump's strategy is to tell everyone he's given up on the pandemic. Worse, his toxic legacy will lead to continued American deaths even if he loses.
The outbreaks have been bothutterly predictableand totally shocking. The Trump administration has consistently downplayed the severity of the coronavirus, encouraged Americans to resist safety measures, and promised that the pandemic is nearing its end. But the people orchestrating the country’s disastrous coronavirus response had no plausible deniability: The very best experts, information, and precautions were all available to them, even if they refused to pass that help on to others.
People will write books on everything Donald Trump did wrong during the pandemic, with explanations both personal and ideological for his administration’s often willful failures. But for a group of people for whom self-preservation has long been an obvious goal, their willingness to put themselves in optional danger, given all the resources at their disposal, can’t be completely explained by Trump’s lack of empathy or his advisers’ policy goals. It suggests that on top of everything else, the administration fell prey to an error of intuition: Presumably, Trump and his coterie felt safe, despite the mortal danger nipping at their heels for all to see.
Trumpworld’s infection fiasco is an especially bizarre case study of one of the pandemic’s defining features: how differentfeelingsafe andbeingsafe actually are. This misperception has played out in millions of homes and workplaces across the country as regular people make good-faith efforts to grapple with the swiftly changing circumstances of American life, absent the resources available to the federal government. Things that used to be safe, such as visiting grandparents and attending a friend’s wedding, are now potentially deadly. Things that used to be foreboding, such as the sight of many masked strangers in public, are now a source of comfort.
The most obvious problem has been the White House's inability to take the coronavirus seriously. Over the weekend we learned that five members of Vice President Mike Pence's inner circle, including his chief of staff, Marc Short, havecontracted the virus.As with Trump's own illness a few weeks ago, these incidents threaten the good functioning of American government. Pence — despite being in close contact with Short — plans to maintain his busy schedule rather than isolate. Meanwhile Trump himself continues to holdlarge ralliesin the final days of the campaign, even though coronavirus cases appear tosurgein the cities he visits. And asTheNew York Timesreports, “masks are not routinely worn” in the White House.
Trump has been recycling remarks from earlier stump speeches.
x
The best part is them booing when @realDonaldTrump says “Your whole commonwealth is shut down” and they fail to realize they are standing and listening to him in public.
At his Allentown rally, Trump just bashed Kamala Harris, Lesley Stahl, Nancy Pelosi, and Savannah Guthrie. So I'm trying to figure out – what do they have in common?
Republicans hold a narrow lead up and down the ticket in Montana, per new NYT/Siena poll Trump 49, Biden 43 Daines 49, Bullock 46 Rosendale 50, Williams 46 Gianforte 48, Cooney 44https://t.co/AK4K55c5jp
Fortunately, Trump has been bad at being an autocrat, but not for trying.
Unlike Trump, however, Modi and Erdogan have diversified their means of self-perpetuation.
For one, they have been far more successful than the U.S. president in forging new realities for their audiences through conspiracy theories and fake news, which has helped them avoid crushing judgment on their performances.
They not only mastered digital technology and social media, they’ve managed to control the legacy media through a regime of intimidation that has silenced and marginalized critics.
Though successful in packing the Supreme Court, and assured of stalwart support from Fox News, Trump could not begin to imitate Modi and Erdogan’s long march through national institutions, from the education system andtelevision channelsto the military.
Even Republicans rallied relatively late around Trump. Modi and Erdogan have long had dedicated ideological cadres working for them.
