The President, in a Surreal Speech, Says Nothing.
President Donald Trump calls COVID-19 a “foreign virus,” which is consistent with his xenophobia and racism, and this description is characterizing his approach to its spread.
Take Wednesday night’s speech (see my attached annotation), during which he proposed several efforts consistent with the policies he’s pursued since taking office, but that amounted to Trump playing the role of Nero (as a meme making its way around social media — inexplicably retweeted by Trump himself — points out).
He has expanded a travel ban, adding much of Europe to China and the Middle East, a move the World Health Organization says is counterproductive. He called for tax cuts, hoping to calm volatile stock markets, but says nothing about actual workers, a full quarter of whom lack access to paid sick leave. He talks of partnering with health insurance companies and medical facilities, who have agreed to temporarily cover testing and to not issue “surprise bills,” but says nothing about the 30 million uninsured or the millions who are essentially underinsured, about a healthcare system quickly being pushed to its capacity, or a pharmaceutical industry whose only focus is profits.
The speech given by the president on Wednesday was the rhetorical equivalent of diet soda: It not only lacked any nutritional value, but it is designed to fool you into thinking it is good for you. He made note of the basic precautions we should be taking: washing our hands frequently; not touching our faces; staying home if sick; coughing into our arms and not our hands; avoiding physical contact; getting medical care immediately. Trump delineating these precautions was important, because it gives them the weight of the presidency, and it just may help slow the spread of misinformation by Fox News and his allies, many of whom have been downplaying the risks or calling this strain of the Coronavirus a hoax. But this was a small part of a speech that ultimately was less about calming the public than about protecting the president’s re-election bid.
Here is the key passage:
“The virus will not have a chance against us. No nation is more prepared or more resilient than the United States.”
Think about the context. As he says this, word comes down that Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert was infected by the virus. The Jazz game against the Oklahoma City Thunder was canceled and, shortly after, the NBA postponed what was left of its season. There are 32 NBA teams in 30 cities, and the NBA is a multi billion industry. The Power Five conferences in the NCAA all announced earlier in the day that they would be playing their tournament games before empty arenas — assuming that the NCAA does not heed calls to postpone their post-season tournaments. Major colleges — Princeton, Rutgers, Montclair State among those in New Jersey — have canceled classes, sent their kids home, and are moving to virtual classrooms. Local school districts have begun to follow suit.
These precautions are necessary, but they speak to a systemic weakness that belies the empty optimism of Trump’s words. The notion of a commonweal or social good has been derided for 50 years, so much so that the rather mild reforms being proposed by Bernie Sanders have come to be viewed as radical. Universal free (through taxes) health care supplemented by a public science and health infrastructure, mandatory paid sick leave for all workers, a living wage — these are systems that would allow all workers both to take care of themselves and to safeguard their neighbors.
I’m not saying these systems would stop the virus in its tracks. The particular characteristics of the virus (the two-week gestation period, symptoms mimic the common cold and the flu) and our lack of immunity would still make that difficult if not impossible. But they would give us a fighting chance.
Instead, Trump, appearing sedated and disconnected from his own words during a national televised address, casts blame on outsiders and offers optimistic pablum to the American public.