Trump brags he’s getting “great reviews” for coronavirus response as death toll breaks 50,000
It’s painfully clear to the entire nation that Donald Trump views the presidency as a very different job than the one a portion of the country elected him to do. From day one, he has been more obsessed with boosting quantifiers that he sees as barometers of “success,” like inauguration ratings, rally attendance numbers, and the stock market, than doing any actual governing.
Even with a pandemic raging across the globe and thousands of Americans dying every week, the president still insists on using the presidency as an extension of his own ego, constantly throwing temper tantrums because the “lamestream media” isn’t giving him enough credit for the high ratings of his daily virus press conference updates — ratings that are high because the nation is desperate for information about the pandemic that is killing thousands of Americans every week.
Now the president is claiming that he and the federal government are getting “good reviews” on their coronavirus response as if he is running a service on Yelp and is not the president of the United States of America.
Getting VERY good reviews of the job the Federal Government is doing on CoronaVirus. Ventilators, building hospitals, beds and yes, Testing, have been handled incredibly well. Testing is getting exponentially better every day. Love seeing our Country safely opening up!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 24, 2020
This morning’s tweet is pure projection, one of Trump’s endless attempts to convince everyone that in fact everything is fine and he hasn’t just entirely and, in some areas, deliberately bungled our nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Contrary to the president’s brags about virus testing, the Trump team’s infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci warned yesterday that the nation isn’t performing anywhere near the number of tests we would need in order to even consider re-opening the economy again, telling TIME Magazine that “I mean, on paper it might look OK, but we absolutely need to significantly ramp up not only the number of tests, but the capacity to actually perform them.”
Thanks to Trump, America lagged far behind the rest of the world in testing and in declaring quarantine protocols, allowing the virus to spread at ease through major population centers.
”The system is decentralized and not coordinated…And the federal government has not stepped in to provide that coordination and help ramp up the manufacturing. Finally, we have such a testing deficit that we are playing a terrible game of catch-up,” warned Kaiser Family Foundation global health director Jen Kates to VOX.
No matter how hard he tries, Trump will not be able to tweet his way into convincing the American people that 50,000 people aren’t dead and that tens of millions no longer have jobs; it’s up to us to make sure he can’t convince them that it’s not his fault.
Social media did not think very highly of the president’s remarks:
50,372 people could not be reached for comment https://t.co/4fOs97K9QI
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 24, 2020
good reviews from who, Bleachdrinkers Weekly?
— Jeff Tiedrich (@itsJeffTiedrich) April 24, 2020
50,000 people are dead. You haven't said a single heartfelt word about any of them. You expressed more sympathy for Kim Jong Un.
— Pé (@4everNeverTrump) April 24, 2020
