The Wednesday night fiasco by Trump

Here's Charlie Pierce's take after witnessing Trump fiasco of a speech on Wednesday night:




"If you didn't get a chance to hear the worst, most counter-productive, most addled, confused and confusing presidential* address in history, please take a moment to watch it on YouTube.

 The stock futures market plunged 1100 points in a few minutes after this "reassuring" emission of babble and lies. 

 The White House and separate federal agencies hurried to issue "clarifications" of the misstatements in the PREPARED TEXT of the speech - not ad libs. These included: 

 1. "Trump" said cargo would be included, and all trade. False 

 2. "Trump" said it was a complete travel ban. False - we will continue to admit all red-blooded American virus carriers 

 3. "Trump" said UK was the only excluded nation. False 

 4. "Trump" said he was ordering insurance companies to treat coronavirus patients without charge. False - only testing will be free. 

 It was the worst moment so far for a very bad presidency* which has been a cascading series of worsening moments. 

 In a sane country his own party would gather to ease him out of office right now = THIS WEEK - before he murders millions of Americans. No telling how many who are alive right now will die because of this man. And forty percent of Americans have lost their minds."




I guess trump no longer believes the Covid-19 is a "Democrat Hoax." As the young'uns say: "Shit's getting real."



Today trump declared a national emergency in his latest bid to combat the escalating coronavirus crisis. Trump said the move would free up $50 billion in additional funding. He also said the order would allow Health and Human Services to waive certain regulations and laws to more quickly deliver testing and care for coronavirus patients. 

"No resource will be spared," Trump said. 

Trump's decision comes after his administration has faced weeks of criticism for failing to adequately respond to the spreading disease, which has killed more than 5,000 people worldwide and infected tens of thousands.

Too little too late. Where was this resolve in January?


Hat tip to P.E. reader and commenter, Dave Miller:

"The Trump Presidency Is Over" "He knows nothing will be the same" Peter Wehner, The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/peter-wehner-trump-presidency-over/607969/ The Trump Presidency Is Over It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the con man behind the curtain. ----------- It took until the second half of Trump’s first term, but the crisis has arrived in the form of the coronavirus pandemic, and it’s hard to name a president who has been as overwhelmed by a crisis as the coronavirus has overwhelmed Donald Trump. --- The president’s misinformation and mendacity about the coronavirus are head-snapping. He claimed that it was contained in America when it was actually spreading. He claimed that we had “shut it down” when we had not. He claimed that testing was available when it wasn’t. He claimed that the coronavirus will one day disappear “like a miracle”; it won’t. He claimed that a vaccine would be available in months; Fauci says it will not be available for a year or more. Trump falsely blamed the Obama administration for impeding coronavirus testing. He stated that the coronavirus first hit the United States later than it actually did. (He said that it was three weeks prior to the point at which he spoke; the actual figure was twice that.) The president claimed that the number of cases in Italy was getting “much better” when it was getting much worse. And in one of the more stunning statements an American president has ever made, Trump admitted that his preference was to keep a cruise ship off the California coast rather than allowing it to dock, because he wanted to keep the number of reported cases of the coronavirus artificially low. ----- “I like the numbers,” Trump said. “I would rather have the numbers stay where they are. But if they want to take them off, they’ll take them off. But if that happens, all of a sudden your 240 [cases] is obviously going to be a much higher number, and probably the 11 [deaths] will be a higher number too.” (Cooler heads prevailed, and over the president’s objections, the Grand Princess was allowed to dock at the Port of Oakland.) On and on it goes. To make matters worse, the president delivered an Oval Office address that was meant to reassure the nation and the markets but instead shook both. The president’s delivery was awkward and stilted; worse, at several points, the president, who decided to ad-lib the teleprompter speech, misstated his administration’s own policies, which the administration had to correct. Stock futures plunged even as the president was still delivering his speech. In his address, the president called for Americans to “unify together as one nation and one family,” despite having referred to Washington Governor Jay Inslee as a “snake” days before the speech and attacking Democrats the morning after it. As The Washington Post’s Dan Balz put it, “Almost everything that could have gone wrong with the speech did go wrong.” ----- Taken together, this is a massive failure in leadership that stems from a massive defect in character. Trump is such a habitual liar that he is incapable of being honest, even when being honest would serve his interests. He is so impulsive, shortsighted, and undisciplined that he is unable to plan or even think beyond the moment. He is such a divisive and polarizing figure that he long ago lost the ability to unite the nation under any circumstances and for any cause. And he is so narcissistic and unreflective that he is completely incapable of learning from his mistakes. The president’s disordered personality makes him as ill-equipped to deal with a crisis as any president has ever been. With few exceptions, what Trump has said is not just useless; it is downright injurious. ---- It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the con man behind the curtain. The president, enraged for having been unmasked, will become more desperate, more embittered, more unhinged. He knows nothing will be the same. His administration may stagger on, but it will be only a hollow shell. The Trump presidency is over 134