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Opinion | Trump to the United States for managing the coronavirus: don't blame me

2020-04-28T17:53:30.520Z


President Donald Trump wants to derogate from his responsibility to manage the coronavirus pandemic amid the worst public health crisis in a century, writes Jen Psaki.


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Editor's Note: Jen Psaki is a CNN political commentator, was the White House director of communications and a State Department spokesperson during the Obama administration. She is vice president of communications and strategy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Psaki is an external advisor to Demand Justice, a progressive group that drives judicial reform. Follow her on @jrpsaki. The opinions expressed in this comment are specific to the author. Read more opinion pieces at CNNe.com/opinion.

(CNN) - When Monday's announcement came from the White House that there would be no briefing, there was a sigh of relief.

And not just from weary data verifiers and healthcare professionals, but from members of President Donald Trump's own political party who have been forced at worst to defend and, at best, explain their inability to prepare, manage and communicate about the worst public health crisis in a century.

  • Trump's outrageous suggestion about disinfectants has a dark history

But there was no way President Trump would miss out on communicating his own alternate reality of how well he coped with and managed the response to the coronavirus. He loves being the center of attention. Even when in the worst possible circumstances. You can't seem to help it. How else would you blame everyone else?

Instead of a repeat of press conferences in the meeting room that have given us hours of confusing and sometimes shocking claims by President Trump, Monday's resurrected event moved to the Rose Garden, which in the old days More normal presidents times were saved for big announcements and state visits.

The briefing, which featured draped flags and well-produced slides on a test plan without a timeline for implementation, did not compensate for the fact that the United States has exceeded 50,000 deaths from coronavirus. Nor to give a message from the White House so confusing that some states like Texas are on the road to reopening, while others see weeks, if not months, of quarantine. Trump may have seemed a little less deranged, mainly because he did not suggest that anyone ingest disinfectant to cure the coronavirus.

But one thing is consistent: Trump says it is not his fault and that the ball does not stop there.

When asked about the concern caused by an increase in calls to poison control centers from the ingestion of disinfectant, her response was to pretend that she had no idea what the journalist was talking about.

"I can't imagine why."

  • Trump is upset by "criticism" of his comments on disinfectants, says source

Really, because all those people you probably accurately state would still vote for you, even if you were to shoot someone - they were Google-searching for Lysol when they said it last Thursday. At least it made the disinfectant difficult to buy right now.

Both Clorox and Lysol made remarks after Trump's press conference last Thursday to make clear that no one should drink or inject their products.

When asked about economic projections, with some economists projecting that we are headed for the next Great Depression, the immediate response from the President of the United States was: "No one is blaming anyone here."

But he clearly took time out of his busy day to read the memo from the National Committee of Republican Senators urging Republican candidates to attack China and claim that the Chinese Communist Party caused the pandemic. No one is to blame except China.

Trump's loyal vice president, Mike Pence, also participated in the alternate reality game. When asked about his claim on March 9 that there would be 4 million tests by the end of the week, Pence suggested he just meant that the tests would exist, not that they would be completed. The ball doesn't stop here either.

If President Trump and the White House really cared about communicating accurate and reliable information about the coronavirus, they would leave the information to health officials. That is not the world we live in. But daily press conferences are meant for one purpose at this point: for President Trump to blame the rising death toll and the next economic crisis on someone else.

covid-19 Donald Trump

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2020-04-28

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