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Krugman: The Deadly Delusions of Mad King Donald
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/opinion/trump-coronavirus.html. . . Until early 2020, Trump led a charmed political life. All his recent predecessors had to deal with some kind of external challenge during their first three years. Barack Obama inherited an economy wracked by a financial crisis. Whatever you think of his response, George W. Bush faced 9/11. Bill Clinton faced stubbornly high unemployment. But Trump inherited a nation at peace and in the middle of a long economic expansion that continued, with no visible change in the trend, after he took office.
Then came Covid-19. Another president might have seen the pandemic as a crisis to be dealt with. But that thought never seems to have crossed Trump’s mind. Instead, he has spent the past five months trying to will us back to where we were in February, when he was sitting on top of a moving train and pretending that he was driving it.
This helps explain his otherwise bizarre aversion to masks: They remind people that we’re in the midst of a pandemic, which is something he wants everyone to forget. Unfortunately for him — and for the rest of us — positive thinking won’t make a virus go away.
That, however, is where the second layer of delusion comes in. By now it’s clear that the cynical decision to sacrifice American lives in pursuit of political advantage is failing even on its own terms. The rush to reopen did produce big job gains in May and early June, but voters were distinctly unimpressed; his polling just kept getting worse. This year, it’s not the economy, stupid — it’s the virus.
And now the surge in infections may be causing the economic recovery to stall.
In other words, the strategy of “damn the experts, full speed ahead” is looking foolish as well as immoral. But Trump, far from reconsidering, is digging the hole he’s in ever deeper — much the same way that he keeps turning up the dial on racism despite the fact that it’s not working for him politically. Incredibly, even as hospitalizations climb he’s still insisting that the rise in reported cases is just an illusion created by more testing.
So what can we do? Trump has another six months in office (if he’s still there after Jan. 20, God help us all). And it’s now clear that he won’t change course, no matter how bad the pandemic gets. As I said, we’re all passengers at the mercy of a mad captain determined to wreck his ship.
Then came Covid-19. Another president might have seen the pandemic as a crisis to be dealt with. But that thought never seems to have crossed Trump’s mind. Instead, he has spent the past five months trying to will us back to where we were in February, when he was sitting on top of a moving train and pretending that he was driving it.
This helps explain his otherwise bizarre aversion to masks: They remind people that we’re in the midst of a pandemic, which is something he wants everyone to forget. Unfortunately for him — and for the rest of us — positive thinking won’t make a virus go away.
That, however, is where the second layer of delusion comes in. By now it’s clear that the cynical decision to sacrifice American lives in pursuit of political advantage is failing even on its own terms. The rush to reopen did produce big job gains in May and early June, but voters were distinctly unimpressed; his polling just kept getting worse. This year, it’s not the economy, stupid — it’s the virus.
And now the surge in infections may be causing the economic recovery to stall.
In other words, the strategy of “damn the experts, full speed ahead” is looking foolish as well as immoral. But Trump, far from reconsidering, is digging the hole he’s in ever deeper — much the same way that he keeps turning up the dial on racism despite the fact that it’s not working for him politically. Incredibly, even as hospitalizations climb he’s still insisting that the rise in reported cases is just an illusion created by more testing.
So what can we do? Trump has another six months in office (if he’s still there after Jan. 20, God help us all). And it’s now clear that he won’t change course, no matter how bad the pandemic gets. As I said, we’re all passengers at the mercy of a mad captain determined to wreck his ship.