On March 18, President Trump declared America at war against Covid-19. More to the point, he took great pride in hailing himself a “wartime president.”
Except that, Trump has been so incompetent on this front, Joe Biden, his Democratic challenger for the November presidential election, has had just cause to repeatedly dismiss him as follows:
Donald Trump wants to style himself as a wartime president against an invisible enemy – but he has surrendered the fight.
Instead of leading the charge to defeat this virus, he has waved the white flag and retreated.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 18, 2020
Sure enough, statistics, courtesy of Johns Hopkins University, explain Trump’s fecklessness in the face of this greatest national challenge since, well, World War II:
- On March 26, the US had 83,836 cases of Covid-19, and 1,296 deaths; today, it has 2,808,003 cases, and 129,476 deaths.
It would’ve been bad enough if he were merely incompetent. But he’s also dangerous. And you don’t have to take my word. Because no less a group than military veterans are saying so.
Most damning, they are marking this Independence Day by taking out ads across all media to call out their commander in chief in this unprecedented fashion:
For the 244 years since we declared our independence, one name has stood as the very definition of the word traitor to the US military: Benedict Arnold. …
Now there’s a new traitor … and no one has betrayed those in uniform like Donald Trump. He consorts with a foreign enemy that puts bounties on the heads of American troops. … To Donald Trump, Russian bounties on American troops is ‘just another hoax!’
This July 4th Benedict Arnold can step aside because Benedict Donald is America’s #1 traitor.
— VoteVets.org (@votevets) July 3, 2020
Of course, if Trump had his way, they would all be summarily executed for lèse-majesté; that is, speaking ill of the de facto king.
The problem for him is that these veterans are simply exercising the freedom of expression the framers of the Constitution fought and died for. Indeed, what could be more patriotic than calling out Trump in this fashion on Independence Day pursuant to the very First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Meanwhile, between the ravages of Covid-19 and the stresses of anti-racism protests, expressions of patriotism have most Americans looking bruised and confused these days. Still, there’s something tremendously liberating in watching so many monuments to racists fall.
After all, white supremacists probably thought monuments to the Confederacy would help fulfill their dreams of lording over America for at least a thousand years. Well, here’s to shattered dreams.
Which brings me to the brazen bit of pandering Trump engaged in at the foot of Mount Rushmore last night. Most commentators are railing about his defiant rallying of supporters to flout social-distancing guidelines just to stroke his ego. But the unmasked idiots who attended are no different than the uninsured ones who voted for him despite his declared intent to take away their only access to affordable health insurance.
Instead, what I found most interesting about this gathering was Trump declaring war and surrendering in one speech.
For, on the one hand, he masked his cowardice in the war against Covid-19 by declaring a phony culture war to protect monuments to America’s racist heritage. Yet, on the other hand, he conceded to the protesters tearing down those monuments by signing an executive order to create a “National Garden of American Heroes” to feature them there instead.
In other words, he had his dimwitted supporters cheering for a graveyard for their cherished Confederate statues. Hell, all that was left was for him to say he was going to design this garden like a big, beautiful oasis out in the Mohave Desert.
In “Trump for President? Don’t Be s Sucker!” April 8, 2011, I warned that he would be nothing more than a P.T. Barnum of politics. His episodic bungling and hijinks over the past three years have played out just as I predicted.
But even I did not think he would exhibit so many grave delusions of grandeur. And I fear we ain’t seen nothing yet …
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