LogFAQs > #936748629

Zeus posted...

Blaming it on Trump is just silly

Or it would be, if Democrats and his own advisors weren't sounding the alarm on this as early as last December. By mid-January, Chuck Schumer was asking Trump to declare a national health emergency and Democrat senators were writing Alex Azar and asking if the executive needed any additional funds or resources from congress. Both communications were apparently ignored, as no substantive changes in the administration's approach came from them.

Trump had three full months to prep for coronavirus and start getting the country ramped up to deal with the influx. Instead, terrified that the disease would hurt his re-election prospects, he spent his time going to rallies and playing golf, all while insisting the virus was nothing to worry about and the situation was well under control and people should just go about their lives and enjoy themselves. Only when the stock market completely crashed did Trump finally start taking it seriously, but by then it was too late - all of the lead time the US had was squandered, and it is now the worst-affected country on the planet.

Trump didn't create the virus and it spreading to US shores was inevitable, but he's done an excellent job in making sure that the US was as ill-prepared as it could possibly be and still manages to continue bungling the response (how many weeks did he wait to activate the DPA?).

Oh, and for an added kicker, his economic mismanagement is now biting him in the ass hard. Climbing out of the economic doldrums that the country is going to be mired in when the virus finally does subside is going to be extremely difficult, because Trump already turned the stimulus taps on full blast despite having inherited a roaring economy from the Obama administration. His tax cut has kneecapped federal earning power and the multi-trillion economic bailout is going to be tacked onto a deficit that was already on track to clear a trillion dollars a year this year. And given that taxpayer earnings are going to be shit this year - and, again, Trump has made this as painful as possible - the finances are going to take ANOTHER hit from tax revenue bottoming out, essentially bearing significant downward pressure from three different sources, all of which Trump had a hand in. And he can't even turn to most of the tried-and-true methods of stimulating growth, like lowering interest rates, because he was already doing that before this all hit.

Trump has managed this situation pretty much as badly as he possibly could have and it's laughable to suggest otherwise.

Zeus posted...

especially considering that it's liberal areas -- places that don't like, trust, or listen to Trump -- that have been hit the hardest.

Yeah, when you have the highest population and highest population densities, you get higher numbers of diseased people. What an incredible observation.

Worth noting, however, that when you adjust for population the picture becomes a lot more mixed. Top five states in cases per 100k residents are:

New York: 530
New Jersey: 337
Louisiana: 221
Massachusetts: 151
Michigan: 128

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