'Pretender in chief' Trump is AWOL with over 155,000 Americans dead in his failed war on COVID-19: columnist

In a blunt-talking column for the Daily Beast, longtime political observer Mike Barnicle mocked Donald Trump for thinking he's a "wartime president," saying the president has done nothing but run from his responsibilities as the country is wracked by the coronavirus pandemic and millions have lost their jobs in an economy that is collapsing.

According to the MSNBC contributor, Trump is a "pretender in chief" who has never been up to the job, and now the country is waking up to the devastation he has brought about.

"Trump’s dreams of wearing that title—commander-in-chief—are both ludicrous and dangerous. Every hour of every day he is a walking, talking, tweeting threat to the national and global security of the United States," he wrote before listing off the following numbers to make his case: "Americans infected by the virus: 4,635,886. Americans dead from the virus: 155,330. Americans filing unemployment claims: 36 million. Americans collecting benefits: 25 million. Unemployment rate: 11.1 percent."

Writing, "That’s just a partial picture of the casualties the pretender-in-chief has left on the battlefield while he sulks in a parody of self-pity. The only thing he has in common with his idols like Patton and MacArthur is that both of those men were also aptly described by critics as 'media whores,'" Barnicle wrote and added that he is unaware of any time during the coronavirus pandemic where the president had offered any sincere expression of sympathy to the families of the COVID-19 victims while also noting the president's complete disregard for those who have lost their jobs and are facing possible eviction.

"He behaves as if millions of Americans, jobless with dwindling hope for a future they now measure by a clock instead of a calendar, are invisible to him. And they are because Trump is a stranger to loss, who’s never had any emotional connection to an element of life that connects all of us to its reality and inevitability," he accused before calling Trump a 'badly-damaged" individual.

The columnist then made his final case against the president.

"A fraud. A race-baiter. A loudmouth. A self-absorbed and self-deluded mini-demagogue who uses the tools of division and deception to puff himself up in front of the mirror," Barnicle wrote of the president. "And, perhaps more than anything, a coward who is afraid of eye-to-eye confrontation, a fraud who rants and pouts and pretends to be a leader as the noise of the rotor-blades of Marine One drown out his words while the lifeline of unemployment checks vanish as he golfs."

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