reflectivepundit

Covid-19 Crisis and the Failed Presidency

By Brigitte L. Nacos

As Americans fear for their own and their family members’ physical, mental, and economic survival and look to the President and the White House to manage the existential Covid-19 crisis with competence and empathy, they do not find what they need in Donald Trump and his administration’s disaster response. The President denies any responsibility for his failure to speed up disaster preparedness when he was well aware of this new global killer virus and effective response measures when he could no longer deny the lethal threat of the virus right here in our country.

Instead of using his overlong televised press conferences to unite the polarized nation, Mr. Trump conducts them like campaign rallies full of narcissistic self-aggrandizement and bomb-throwing against reporters asking “nasty” questions and governors pleading for more federal disaster help in order to save the lives of Americans.

In the “Afterword” of the paperback edition of his book “Time to Get Tough” Trump wrote,

“A great leader can bring America together. But unfortunately for us, Barack Obama is not a leader. So who can the country turn to?”

This was published in 2015, the pre-primary time, when he obviously figured he would be the president who would bring unity to this country. Yet, in more than three years at the helm he has not united Americans. Indeed, he has magnified partisan and ideological polarization. That’s why there is no strong rally-‘round-the-president effect at the height of this deadly crisis.

In serious, national emergencies a president is not supposed to “backup” governors of the individual states as the President claimed yesterday in a repeat of similar statement. No, when disasters strike, the President is the one who must lead and become the crisis manager-in-chief.  This is the time when he has to provide consistent and factual information as well as assure and console a scared and suffering nation.

In his book “Presidential Character” James Barber argues that character, the core of personality, determines how “the President orients himself toward life-not for the moment, but enduringly." Obviously, this is not a character trait of this president. In “The Art of the Deal” Trump wrote,

“Most people are surprised by the way I work. I play it very loose. …You can’t be entrepreneurial if you’ve too much structure. I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops”

This self-described attention to the moment—not the larger context—explains why this attention-challenged president changes his positions again and again and creates confusion. In the same book, he reveals, “I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present.” Exclusively focusing on the present--that’s the problem with this presidency and one of the major reasons for its failure.

There is no interest in the institutional memory and the professional expertise of civil servants—not even when it comes to responding to disaster. Key positions in the executive branch, and especially in agencies charged with emergency preparedness are held by political appointees without expertise in the areas they are supposed to guide. They did carry out their most important mission, namely, to reject and erase what previous presidents and their administrations left behind—including, extensive preparedness protocols for global pandemics that many scientists predicted for years.

During the 2016 Obama-Trump transition, officials from both sides got together for a pandemic table exercise that assumed the possibility or even likelihood of such a global disaster striking within the next few years.

Instead of continuing the work of the previous administration, the Global Health Security Office in the National Security Council was dismantled during John Bolton’s tenure as National Security Advisor. Although Trump claimed in one of his press events that he knew nothing about this, his underlings knew then and know now that he wants everything erased that has a link to his predecessor.

But the President and his White House crew ignored also a warning of lacking preparedness for a killer virus pandemic by their own administration.

Covid-19: Who are the Real Enemies of the American People?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

As the Covid-19 death toll moved towards 5,000 this week and U.S.  President Trump announced that a total of between 100,000 and 200,000+ Americans not surviving the pandemic would be “a win,” Trump’s favorite media stars continued to minimize the health crisis and instead blamed and attacked their usual selections of enemies of the people. As they tell it day-in and day-out, the Coronavirus is not a major problem, if any. In short form, this is their take: the fake news media hype the virus into an existential threat and the collective far left/democratic/liberal/socialist deep state exploit this hoax to realize their un-American agenda and to oust the heroic president whose early actions (closing the borders to Chinese travelers) prevented a real health crisis.

Not long ago, President Trump awarded Rush Limbaugh, the far-right talk show host, the Medal of Freedom, praising him for “decades of tireless devotion to our country.” Well, the devoted patriot Limbaugh told his listeners the other day that our economy is being destroyed under the guise of saving life.  Tell that to the families of the 5,000 victims of covid-19! Tell that to the many thousands of men and women, young and old, poor and rich on respirators fighting for their lives! Tell that to the many thousands of medical doctors, nurses, firefighters, police officers, and other emergency personnel who put their lives on the line without sufficient personal protection equipment.

Limbaugh is not the only one among President Trump’s soul mates in the media whose vitriolic rhetoric has not weakened in the face of the current crisis. Instead, they have sharpened the gap between the conservative Trumpian “us” and the unpatriotic “them” who threaten the reactionary “Make America Great Again” and “America First” agenda. It is telling that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading scientist on infectious diseases and advocate of strict defense measures against Covid-19, needs now beefed up security in response to death threats. For the far right, he has become the face of the “deep state” simply because he tells Americans the facts and the truth.

Every day, every hour, every minute the numbers of infected and dead Americans and people around the world grow in spite of the Covid-19 hoax conspiracy theories. The media personalities who denounced for weeks and continue to condemn the grim assessments and recommendations of leading scientists may well have influenced those Republican governors, mayors, county executives, and other decision-makers who were slow in adopting or continue to refuse social distancing measures into their respective communities.  

As for the Covid-19 deniers, it becomes clearer every day who the real enemies of the American people are!

Less clear is whether and how those prominent virus deniers in Trumpian propaganda orbit and their beloved President reconcile their unchanged Covid-19 views with the recent changes in Trump’s public positions, namely the recognition of the fast spreading virus as lethal threat and more urgent problem than the economy and the stock market.

Whatever the outcome of the contradiction between Trumpian opinion makers and their hero turns out to be, it will affect our country’s struggle against the deadly virus in our midst--and its costs in terms of lives saved and lost.  

Trump’s Claim to Be an Absolute Ruler: “I am the Chief Law Enforcement Officer”

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Incredibly, this morning’s most prominent headline in the New York Times (as in other leading newspapers) did not highlight the most shocking and troubling statement the 45^th U.S. president made the previous evening. “I am the chief law enforcement officer,” Donald Trump said shortly after issuing pardons and commutations of sentences to an unruly bunch of corrupt individuals—without the “normal” role of the Justice Department. 

Probably without knowing that France’s Louis XIV coined the dubious justification of absolute monarchy with the exclamation “l’etat c’est moi” (“I am the state”), Donald Trump told us basically that only he determines what the law is, who will or will not be charged, tried, found guilty, and serve a sentence.

Last night, President Trump himself confirmed what has been evident for a while: With the help of Attorney-General William Barr as his most faithful protector and the Republican Senate majority and the rest of the GOP as enthusiastic cheerleaders rather than the constitutional check of an out of control executive, Donald Trump is now no longer the president in a system that was designed by our Founding Fathers.

Even before reelection and a second term Trump is bold enough to do away with the appearance of following the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law—not men and the well- established rules of the game.

In reality, in his ascent to dictatorial rule President Trump resembles now the strongman he admires most, Vladimir Putin of Russia.

The most troubling aspect is the absence of any protests from Washington or elsewhere in the country. Aside from the superficial comments by the talking heads in evening and morning shows and their never changing line-up of so-called expert guests, there were no outcries from leading Republicans or Democrats.

And there were no spontaneous protests by regular citizens in defense of their democracy. Instead, it was a day like any other day--for Trump’s supporters and for his opponents.

Add to this an uptick in Trump’s approval ratings of late and the increasingly bloody and completely counterproductive infights between the men and women competing for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party as the stuff that emboldens this president even further.

Sometimes democracy dies in darkness. This time, our democracy spirals downward in bright daylight. 

Until is too late?

The GOP Crowned the First American King

By Brigitte L. Nacos

 “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark!” Nothing characterizes today’s state of affairs in our country better than this sentence from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” that came to mean more generally that things are wrong, troubling, threatening.

If there were any doubts that the liberal democracy that the Founders designed and codified in the U.S. Constitution was trampled by the 45^th U.S. president and the Republican Party in the first three years of his term, such calms were squashed during the impeachment procedures against Donald J. Trump in the U.S. Senate.

What unfolded in the upper chamber of Congress this week was as shameful as it can get in a democracy: In concert with the White House, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell staged a show trial as practiced in totalitarian settings. Witnesses were not allowed to testify, documents not subpoenaed.

In spite of massive evidence in support of the two impeachment articles presented by House managers GOP senators broke their oath of impartiality and sided with their “Great Leader” and his wacky crew of defense attorneys.

Before the ultimate “not guilty” verdict was in, the outcome was clear. Even those GOP Senators who believed that Trump was guilty of “Abuse of Power” and “Obstruction of Congress” supported acquittal.    

The party of Trump—once known as the Republican Grand Old Party—completely accepted and excused this president’s (1) well-documented efforts to bribe the president of Ukraine to smear a potential political opponent in the upcoming presidential campaign by withholding congress-approved military aid urgently needed to fight Russian invaders; and (2) his refusal to allow White House officials testify in the impeachment procedures in the House and provide relevant administration documents to House committees.

In short, Mitch McConnell and GOP senators crowned the first American King, the monarch that the Founding Father’s wanted to abolish forever through a system of checks and balances and shared powers.

Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his respect and admiration for the most authoritarian leaders of our time, from Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan, China’s Xi Jinping to North Korea’s Kim Jong Um, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, and others. He loves these men because they are “strong” and wield their power widely.  Now he has increased his own power.

Even before the final roll call next week, President Trump knows that there will be not be congressional checks on any misuse of power  nor on obstruction of congressional oversight as long as the GOP has the majority in the Senate.

With a toothless majority in Congresses upper chamber, and Attorney-General at the President’s service, two Trump appointed members on the Supreme Court, and intimidated civil servants fearful to stick to fact and truth, American democracy as envisioned by the Framers and we know from the past is rotten.

No, we do not have an authoritarian system yet, but we are moving towards what Hungary’s Viktor Orban and other European populists call blatantly “illiberal democracy.” It is not difficult to imagine what would happen in a second Trump term.

The elections on November 3 can stop this downward slide!

Why did Trump order the Assassination of the Iranian General? The President’s Twitter Archive provides the Best Answer

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Since 2011, Donald Trump mentioned Iran 380 times in tweets that revealed his obsession with and hostility towards the Islamic Republic. In many of these Twitter messages he attacked President Obama for not being tough enough.

But in the most revealing tweets are the following:

Nov.  14, 2011: @BarackObama will attack Iran in the not too distant future because it will help him to win the election.

Nov. 29, 2011: In order to get elected @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.

April 4, 2012: Remember what I said about @BarackObama attacking Iran before the election...

Oct. 22, 2013: Don’t let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected—be aware Republicans!

As we know, President Obama did not attack Iran to trigger a rally-‘round-the-flag effect in support of his reelection chances as Trump predicted wrongly.

However, according to the Pentagon, it was Trump who ordered the deadly drone strikes that killed Qassim Soleimani, the Iranian general in charge of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force. While not shedding tears over Soleimani’s demise, one wonders about the overall strategic concept behind the assassination. While an all-out war is unlikely, Iran will strike back sometime, somewhere.  And the explosive Middle East will become even more dangerous and destabilized.

But that obviously does not concern Trump.

Replace “@BarackObama” and “Obama” with @realDonaldTrump in the four tweets above and you get a good idea why the Commander-in-Chief gave the green light for the assassination of the Iranian general on the territory of the sovereign state of Iraq.  

The President obviously believes that the conflict with Iran will raise his public approval and help his reelection along with his fight against the impeachment process.

So far, so good, for Trump: The breaking news now is all about the U.S.-Iran conflict—not about impeachment and likely Democrats running against the president in the general election campaign.