As the United States hit a record one million new cases of COVID-19 just last week alone, President Donald J. Trump withdrew into hiding behind the walls he built around the White House.
"Imagine if, in November 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had decided to check out of World War II because it wasn’t going as well as he had hoped. Imagine if he had secluded himself in the Oval Office, listening to the radio all day, laughing at 'Fibber McGee and Molly' and cursing at Walter Winchell’s news program," Max Boot wrote for the Washington Post Monday.
"Imagine if, instead of attending meetings with his military chiefs, he spent his time purging government officials who weren’t loyal New Dealers and screaming about supposed fraud in the midterm elections (a big Republican victory)," Boot continued. "That’s roughly where we stand today with President Trump and the coronavirus."
The Washington Post reports that “the president has not attended a coronavirus task force meeting in ‘at least five months,’” “is no longer regularly briefed on the pandemic by his team of doctors,” “rarely reads the daily virus reports” prepared by his staff and “has all but ceased to actively manage the deadly pandemic.”
Even though Trump promised to deliver "the best stimulus package you've ever seen" after the election, no one has seen it. He did, however, manage to send out a tweet saying, "Get it done!" but, as Boot put it, "tweeting is no substitute for legislating."
"Trump’s focus in his final days seems to be on replacing competent officials with unqualified loyalists," Boot wrote. "A purge directed by his 30-year-old former 'body man' has heads rolling at the Defense Department, Homeland Security, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Energy Department and even at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — where a climate-change denier has been put in charge of the U.S. Global Change Research Program."
Boot declared, "Trump could not be doing more damage if he were consciously attempting to sabotage the U.S. government."