Trump's incoherent COVID bluster is destroying him -- but America continues to suffer

[marmar]

Trump's incoherent COVID bluster is destroying him — but America continues to suffer
Trump is back home and tweeting like a lunatic — maybe he's fine! But this has been a massive political train wreck

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
OCTOBER 7, 2020 1:00PM


(Salon) President Trump spent Tuesday night tweeting madly for hours about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and various conspiracy theories about the 2016 election. Twitterati speculated that his experimental drug cocktail and steroid treatment for COVID-19 might be making him manic and grandiose. But how could you tell, really? This is pretty much his normal modus operandi. The only reason one might suspect that his drug treatment was contributing to the burst of energy and wild commentary is that he is a 74-year-old man with co-morbidities who has been seriously ill with a disease that has killed more than 210,000 Americans. Since he didn't even make one of his "proof of life" videos on Tuesday, it's possible someone else was tweeting for him. But in the end the best guess is that Trump was lying in bed with Fox News on as usual, scrolling through his Twitter feed and incoherently venting his spleen — just as he might do on any other Tuesday night.

Sick or high or just having a normal one, it is perfectly understandable that Trump would be melting down in spectacular fashion. His only concern for the last four years has been getting re-elected for four more years, and that's not going well at all at the moment. This tumultuous last couple of weeks brought him only one piece of good news: the death of a beloved liberal icon, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The insensitive glee with which Trump and his GOP accomplices greeted that event, and their shameless hypocrisy in insisting on filling the seat just weeks before the election, was a true high point for the Republicans this year. I hope they enjoyed their moment, because everything that's happened to them since then has amounted to an epic train wreck.

While Republicans were still swilling champagne, the New York Times reported out a major exposé based upon Trump's long-hidden tax returns. It turns out he didn't bother to pay federal income taxes in most recent years — apparently that's for the little people. In normal times that would have been a huge scandal, but Trump managed to distract everyone away from that by acting like a deranged barbarian in the first presidential debate with Joe Biden, quickly followed by the news that the White House had become a major COVID cluster, with dozens of people diagnosed with the virus, including the president, the first lady, at least three senators and several of Trump's top aides and campaign officials.

After all that, I think we've all been wondering how the American people would react. From the looks of the polling so far, they're not pleased. In fact, the vast majority seems to believe that Trump and his administration were asking for trouble and they got it.

According to a CNN/SSRS poll released on Monday, 63% said Trump acted irresponsibly in handling the risk of getting the virus and giving it to others. Only 33% said he had done the right thing, which means even some of his own voters aren't impressed with his actions. And 69% said they couldn't trust what the White House was saying about Trump's health. Considering the Soviet-style propaganda campaign they've been running at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that's no surprise. .........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/10/07/trumps-incoherent-covid-bluster-is-destroying-him--but-america-continues-to-suffer/