Writing in the New York Times this Thursday, economist Paul Krugman writes that when it comes to President Trump's response to the growing coronavirus outbreak, specifically his TV address to the nation in what was an attempt to calm people's fears -- it's "worse than even his harshest critics could have imagined."
"His administration has failed to deliver the most basic prerequisite of pandemic response, widespread testing to track the disease’s spread," Krugman writes. "He has failed to implement recommendations of public health experts, instead imposing pointless travel bans on foreigners when all indications are that the disease is already well established in the United States."
"And his response to the economic fallout has veered between complacency and hysteria, with a strong admixture of cronyism," he adds.
Krugman contends that the Centers for Disease Control, a normally highly competent agency, "utterly failed" to provide widespread coronavirus testing to the public -- a failure that sparks the suspicion that his response was "related to politics, perhaps to Trump’s desire to play down the threat." Compounding the failure was Trump's directive to health agencies to treat all coronavirus deliberations as classified. "This makes no sense and is indeed destructive in terms of public policy, but it makes perfect sense if the administration doesn’t want the public to know how its actions are endangering American lives," writes Krugman.
According to Krugman, what we're seeing play out in Trump's response to a global pandemic is a meltdown -- "not just a meltdown of the markets, but a meltdown of Trump’s mind."
"What we saw in Wednesday’s speech was that he’s completely incapable of rising to the occasion. We needed to see a leader; what we saw was an incompetent, delusional blowhard."
Read his full op-ed over at The New York Times.
