The coronavirus crisis calls for a real leader -- and it's time for Trump to step aside: columnist

Writing for the Washington Post, columnist Colbert King said it is time for Donald Trump to exit the spotlight as the country deals with coronavirus pandemic that is killing Americans due to his delays and poor management of the government during the health crisis.

Following yet another coronavirus task force press conference on Friday where the president took over and made it all about himself, King said it is time for Trump to -- at least -- retreat to shadows and let the professionals do their jobs without interference.

Noting that the president has tried to soft-sell the dangers the pandemic still might unleash by saying, "We will just get through it," the columnist said the president still doesn't get it despite the rocketing infection rates.

"At issue is not whether we will 'get through' the novel coronavirus, which causes the respiratory disease officially dubbed covid-19. Pandemics eventually play out. Though this dangerous virus is spiraling out of control today — infecting more than 250,000 people and killing more than 11,000 since December — it will not be here forever," he wrote before adding, "What matters most at this moment is how the onslaught is being handled. Is it being addressed head-on as a global pandemic that, above all else, must be combated? Or is the outbreak being treated as an unexpected threat to Trump’s personal political fortunes?

Sadly, with all the country now has on its hands, Trump has politicized and personalized the problem."

According to the columnist, the president has continually played down the coronavirus threat long before it was designated a pandemic -- and he no longer has any credibility when he tries to reassure the public.

"Besides spouting untruths and wild exaggerations, Trump deflects challenges to his stewardship by shifting blame — to former president Barack Obama and past administrations, to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats on the Hill, to the Federal Reserve, and to the media, which, he whines, only give him bad press," he wrote. "Now, confronted with hard truths about the disease, his administration’s muddled response and the country’s economic collapse, Trump is trying to switch hats from belittler in chief to wartime commander. But our great war presidents had great wartime generals: Harry Truman had Dwight D. Eisenhower; Abraham Lincoln had Ulysses S. Grant. Vice President Pence, who is heading up Trump’s coronavirus task force, is no Eisenhower or Grant."

"And Trump sure as hell is no Truman or Lincoln," he dryly concluded.

You can read the whole column here.