It's clear that President Donald Trump is panicking over the turn the country is taking, according to one columnist.Washington Post political writer Greg Sargent explained in his Monday column that since the first hint of a coronavirus/COVID-19, Trump has claimed that everything is fine and it's not a big deal.
Sargent explained that the denial hampered the federal response to the virus and could have saved lives. The president revealed Friday that he doesn't even know what the National Security Council's pandemic unit was and who killed it. He turned to Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday trying to blame him, but Fauci works for the National Institute Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Not the National Security Council. When he was asked about it, he called it a "nasty question" from the PBS reporter who asked it.
"Determined not to be outdone by his own malice and depravity, Trump is taking new steps that threaten to make all of it worse," wrote Sargent. "He’s telling millions of Americans to entirely shut out any and all correctives to his falsehoods. He’s insisting they must plug their ears to any criticism designed to hold his government accountable for the failures we’re seeing, even though such criticism could nudge the response in a more constructive direction."
During Sunday's briefing, Trump even raged at the media for reporting about his false claims about a Google website that would help coordinate the coronavirus response. When he spoke about it on Friday, Trump told the world it would be ready Sunday. He even mocked the Obamacare website saying the Google coronavirus site would take a lot less time. In fact, the website is only for Bay Area coronavirus cases. It's only a test-run. It will be many months before it can be scaled up to be used nationally. Trump waved a page of Google tweets clarifying the facts, and told reporters they needed to correct their stories.
The Washington Post columnist says it's clear the president doesn't understand the facts about the website he's touting.
"But also note Trump’s declaration that, in a larger sense, the media is not being truthful at a time of crisis," wrote Sargent. "Trump is using his megaphone to tell the American people not to trust an institution they must rely on for information amid an ongoing public health emergency, all because that institution held him accountable for his own failures on this front."
It isn't the first time Trump has fought with the media over the truth, the difference is that now Trump is losing the battle and his supporters who trust him over facts run the risk of losing their lives.
"The relentless effort to discredit the very same news media that’s informing the public where he will not, and imposing a form of accountability on Trump that he would never dream of imposing on himself, is of a piece with all that," Sargent closed. "And we can only guess at how many people will be deceived and misled, at exactly the moment when they need good information the most."
