"He Can't Make Any Big Decisions": As the Crisis Escalates, Trump Experiments With a Pivot

[babylonsister]

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/03/as-the-crisis-escalates-trump-experiments-with-a-pivot

“He Can’t Make Any Big Decisions”: As the Crisis Escalates, Trump Experiments With a Pivot
With his “wartime president” posture failing to stop the slide and his presidency in the balance, Trump toys with reopening the economy early.
By Gabriel Sherman
March 23, 2020


As the death toll from the coronavirus accelerates across the country—by Monday there have been more than 400 domestic fatalities—Donald Trump is grasping for a strategy before the crisis destroys his presidency. He has tried playing Roosevelt by claiming the mantle of “wartime president” while also playing to his nativist base by labeling COVID-19 “the China virus.” Now, Trump appears ready to disregard the advice of his medical advisers like Dr. Anthony Fauci by reopening the economy far sooner than Fauci has said is safe.

According to sources, Trump is increasingly frustrated with Fauci and governors who advocated for shutting down large swathes of the economy to stop COVID-19’s out-of-control spread. According to four Republicans briefed on internal West Wing conversations, Trump is fuming privately that Fauci advised him that the only way to blunt the pandemic was to bring the economy to a halt. “Trump is furious,” a former West Wing official said. “He’s been calling business leaders asking if he should just reopen the economy,” a Republican briefed on the conversations told me. “He’s hearing that you have to get the economy going,” another former West Wing official said.

So far, Trump has refrained from publicly lashing out at Fauci and New York governor Andrew Cuomo, whose lucid and empathetic press conferences are in contrast to Trump’s shambolic media theater. But late Sunday night, as Dallas became the latest city to compel its citizens to stay home, Trump tweeted: “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!”

The pivot away from the strict social-distancing strategy is gaining traction in the business community. On Sunday, former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein—who endorsed Hillary Clinton—tweeted: “[C]rushing the economy, jobs and morale is also a health issue-and beyond. Within a very few weeks let those with a lower risk to the disease return to work.” Tom Bossert, Trump's former Homeland Security adviser, told me the pivot is reflective of Americans' skepticism of government. "This has to do with peoples' relationship to government authority prior to this event."

snip//

As Trump sends mixed messages, the stock market slide has only deepened. On Friday, he said he had invoked the Defense Production Act, but under pressure from his base not to nationalize the economy, he said Sunday that he wouldn’t compel companies to produce critical medical equipment. He’s now experimenting with a new approach to the crisis, but it’s unclear what legal authority he would have to supersede local shelter-in-place restrictions. Behind the bluster, he’s hamstrung. “He can’t make any big decisions,” a former West Wing official said. “He knows once you do, you can’t go back.”

[Totally Tunsie]

1. Good Grief - He's going to kill us all.

Sounds like Dr. Fauci is hanging on by a thread when we need him the most. He's the only one to shout that the emperor is not wearing clothes! I fear Fauci might quit in frustration even before Chump gets around to firing him.

Chump CANNOT be in charge of handling this crisis!

[bdamomma]

2. Here you go read this

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/dr-fauci-walking-fine-line-by-contradicting-trumps-misinformation-over-fear-hell-be-sidelined-by-angry-president/

[procon]

3. Watch for Trump to make Fauci the new ambassador to Iceland. nt

[global1]

4. If The Business Community Sides With Trump And Advocates People Going Back To Work....

and scrapping 'social distancing' it's going to come down to individuals to make a decision. They are going to have to either stay sheltered in their homes - controlling their own environment and feeling safe at home OR they are going to be forced by their employers to put themselves in harms way and be coerced into going back to work or perhaps losing their jobs.

Employers are going to have to make a decision as well. They are having to continue to support their employees - keep them safe - and close down their businesses or continue to let their employees work from home OR they are going to have to succumb to the pressures of Trump and the corporate business community and bankers and throw caution to the wind and insist that their employees come back to work.

Again - Trump pivoting to reopening the economy early will undo any of the momentum we made to flatten the curve. Trump is only thinking about himself here. He's only focused on winning re-election and in my opinion - this is a desperation move on his part.

His WH staff should know better and they have to find a way to muzzle Trump. I told someone yesterday that if they have to tie him in his chair behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval - then they need to do that.

Otherwise - the expansion of the virus in Italy and the deaths associated with it - will be minuscule in comparison to what will happen here in the U.S. because of his criminal incompetence.

We're coming to a major crossroads here and I fear which road Trump will choose.

[Blasphemer]

6. I wonder about their liability.

On the one hand, they can argue the federal govt gave them the okay but, on the other hand, there is public health evidence of the dangers. Not to mention the fact that many states will continue the social distancing orders. I think it's a risky proposition for both Trump and the business community.

[Corgigal]

5. Wouldn't blue Governors

just tell him to fuck off? No one, in their right mind, trust Trump. Plus add your life, or a loved one, to his decisions.

The death numbers will be owned by Trump. Which is another set of numbers, but are not the stock market.

[htuttle]

7. Not sure why he even thinks he has any say in this anymore

Everything shut down IN SPITE of his lies about the cases of infection 'coming close to zero'.

This isn't his decision to make anymore. He abdicated that responsibility.

[kentuck]

8. He's afraid he would be held responsible.

Somebody else needs to make the decision and give him the credit. That's how he likes it.l

[NYC Liberal]

9. He has no authority here.

Let him try.

[tavernier]

10. The China Virus. I'd name it after him

but Swine Flu is already taken.

[Skraxx]

11. How Long Before Fauci is Fired? That will be the "dead" giveaway (literally) that he's making this

"pivot". "Leadership" at it's finest.

[Turin_C3PO]

12. Hopefully,

the governors will tell him to fuck off and continue with their plans for the states.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

13. Fuck the business community and their markets

Fuck the rich.

[onethatcares]

14. so if someone contracts it at a restuarant

due to staff being told to return to work then it spreads and mutates to be a more virulent strain of the virus causing mass death on a larger scale .....................gaud, I can't even fathom this.

But on the sunny side, GDP would be up....