One day last week Donald Trump averaged a tweet every 7 1/2 minutes. None of the tweets mentioned the nearly 80,000 Americans who died from COVID-19 or any plans for addressing the pandemic. What’s with the tweeting? When will he begin leading?
Trump’s leadership plan has been to discount, ignore and reverse anything President Obama enacted. In 2017, Trump proposed cutting $277 million in pandemic preparedness funding. He gutted CDC funding and disbanded the directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, which Obama established after the successful control of the international ebola epidemic of 2014. Trump’s administration ignored the comprehensive (69-page) plan that Obama provided on how to handle a pandemic, and lied that it didn’t exist. Despite repeated dire warnings beginning as early as July, 2019, that the U.S. was precariously unprepared and underfunded to deal with a pandemic, Trump continued to cut funding and discount the scientific facts presented to him.
As a stark and telling contrast, South Korea and the USA identified their first COVID-19 cases on the same day, Feb. 15. South Korea’s leaders took the threat seriously: testing, tracking and containing the deadly virus. Trump told Americans, “The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.” (Feb. 24) “It’s going to disappear…like a miracle.” (Feb. 28). “Just stay calm. It will go away.” (March 10). For precious weeks, people continued to travel, mingle, and spread the virus. We all know the horror our health-care providers have had in attempting to treat and control this rampant illness without adequate tests, protective equipment, and supplies. Today South Korea’s virus death toll is 263; America’s is 91,275, up nearly 11,000 in just the past week.
Trump spends his time tweeting excuses, throwing tantrums, firing his “enemies,” and fabricating conspiracy theories to divert attention from the fact that he was, is, and always will be an incapable leader.
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Meanwhile, Americans have lost and are continuing to lose our livelihoods, our freedoms, and our very lives.
Annette Roberts-Gray
Carbondale
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