Once, toward the end of his life, brain scrambled by dementia and probably some small strokes, my grandpa at breakfast poured orange juice on his Cheerios as the rest of us looked on, a little stunned. He studied the bowl puzzledly for a moment and then with a shrug of his shoulders took a big spoonful as my uncle, laughing, reached across the table and scooped the bowl away. Then in front of dazed grandpa my uncle said to the rest of us, sort of apologetically, "You have to laugh, it's better than the other options."
That's how I feel now watching Trump try to cope with coronavirus. It's serious business, so maybe laughing is in poor taste, but my god, what are the better options when for example—
(1)Trump, in a White House presser on Feb 26, his first very formal response to the pandemic, bragged about how only 15 Americans had been infected and predicted that "the 15, within a couple of days, is going to be down close to zero." He concluded, "That's a pretty good job we've done." At the very same press conference, public health officials, such as the CDC's principal deputy director, provided a less rosy account, correctly forecasting that the number of cases would not fall but spike. Within a few minutes, from the same podium, on national tv, the president said "x" while his government's public health experts said "opposite of x."
(2) An even more formal response, in the form of an Oval Office address to the nation, occurred last Wednesday evening. This was a prepared speech that Trump read from a teleprompter. It included significant errors that the White House (as is said) "later had to walk back." It's not clear whether the prepared speech was deficient or the president just read it wrong; perhaps different instances had different causes. Here is one problematic sentence from the speech, as read by Trump (the context is the travel ban from Europe he had just announced):
There will be exemptions for Americans who have undergone appropriate screenings and these prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo, but various other things as we get approval.
To the degree these words are at all coherent, you'd have to conclude that (1) re-entry of American citizens currently in Europe is contingent on "appropriate screenings" (whatever that means); and (2) the prohibitions apply to trade and cargo. Neither (1) nor (2) is true. On account of (1), there was on Thursday, before the ban went into effect at Friday midnight, a mad scramble for the last seats on planes headed to American airports from European ones—and, since there was panic, price gouging. With regard to (2), the way the sentence trails off into empty fog—"various other things as we get approval"—suggests that Trump wholly butchered the reading and that the word "only" was not in the teleprompter: ". . . these prohibitions will not [only] apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo . . . ."
In favor of the butchered reading theory, "various other things as we get approval" does sound like the kind of word rot Trump slides into when he's messed up and has to ad-lib his way to a period. Also, his reading, even when it was coherent, seemed tortured and halting, like a second grader trying to read aloud a third grade text. There has been speculation that he needs glasses but is too vain—a friendly surmise, since the most likely alternative is that he’s barely able to read.
On the other hand, maybe all that is wrong. Maybe the speech as written was that bad.
At another place in the speech, Trump indicated he had prevailed upon leaders of the health insurance industry "to waive all co-payments for coronavirus treatments, extend insurance coverage to these treatments and to prevent surprise medical billing." It turns out, however, that these provisions relate to coronavirus testing, not coronavirus treatments. Details, details! But it's great that there is no out-of-pocket expense for a test that hardly anyone can currently receive!
(3)Yesterday's press conference in the Rose Garden may be regarded as a tacit admission that the Oval Office address was a disaster. After Trump was done speaking Wednesday evening, or maybe including while he was speaking, stock futures plummeted, and the next day, Thursday, the Dow was down 10%, its worst day in more than 30 years. The Rose Garden strategy may have been to limit Trump's speaking opportunities, for he was backed by a bunch of corporate CEOs whom he called to the mic, one at a time, to thank and praise him. Trump, who has been exposed to coronavirus, shook their hands and adjusted the microphone according to the next groveler's height. It seems that there was some kind of "public-private partnership" being announced, but the details were hazy until Mike Pence spoke and said that the CEOs had promised to give over a portion of their store parking lots for drive-up testing that would begin . . . no one said when it would begin. The sacrifice is huge, to be sure, but who knows if the public-spirited CEOs will ever have to share their parking lots.
The Google CEO was not in the Rose Garden. This seemed weird, inasmuch as all those others were but the most concrete forward step announced in the presentation related to a website Google is supposedly developing. When ready for release, presumably soon, the site would guide users across the country through some questions intended to determine whether they should be tested for coronavirus and, if they should, the nearest location. After the presentation was over, journalists started making inquiries, and the minor mystery about the Google CEO's absence lifted: practically none of the advertised details about this purported website were true.
Unbelievable.
Reporters were allowed to ask questions—probably a mistake. When asked whether he took responsibility for the failure to ramp up coronavirus testing, Trump said bluntly that he did not. Another reporter said, in effect, ok, you won't take responsibility for things that haven't happened, what about things that have happened, in your administration, like the 2018 firing of the federal government's entire pandemic response chain of command? Trump said it was "a nasty question," that he personally had done no such thing, and hadn't heard of this—did Tony know about it? He looked over his shoulder at Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as if he expected Fauci to come forward and say something unnasty, maybe fall on a sword, but the doctor stood in place. No one doubts the pandemic experts were fired—well, John Bolton, who performed the execution, prefers to say that "structures" were "streamlined."
(4) The Rose Garden event began around a half hour before Wall Street's closing bell. The wild stock market ride continued, with the Dow gaining back most of the previous day's steep loss, a good chunk of it at the end of the trading day. Trump was obviously quite proud of this and sent to supporters, such as Lou Dobbs, autographed printouts exhibiting graphically the day's market surge—the presidential equivalent of grandma bragging that she won $400 at the casino when actually she lost $100 (but had once been down $500).
(5) I almost forgot this bizarre-o performance at the CDC headquarters.
(6) So that is a recap of some of Trump's more official responses to the pandemic. In between these, he's said warm April weather will make coronavirus go away. Sure it will! He has also shared his "hunch" about what the death rate from coronavirus will prove to be. On another occasion, he spoke of the possibility that the plague will lift, "like a miracle," maybe because then there would be no need to wait till April. Ivanka has probably told him he can't play golf while people are dying.
Is it possible to think this is all funny—in the way, perhaps, that the audience may frequently laugh during performances of Samuel Beckett's dark, absurdist dramas? For certain it's not encouraging. For that, we have regular people, like neighbors of mine knocking on doors of the elderly to say, "I'd be happy to shop for you if you'd prefer staying home." (I know about this by chance, not because any of my wonderful neighbors consider me to be among the vulnerable elderly—yet.) What about this tweet?
Dark times for all. Trying to find some bright spots. If you were meant to perform in your High School musical and it was cancelled please post yourself singing and tag me. I want to be your audience!! Sending all my love and black market toilet paper. 💛 pic.twitter.com/BVYR4t3dJE
— Laura Benanti (@LauraBenanti) March 13, 2020
The replies go on and on and on and on and on and on. Here is one; I just happened to click on it as I was scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.
I attend Union High School and we are doing Once On This Island. As of now our show is postponed but we don’t know how long. This is a little snipbit of Waiting For Life pic.twitter.com/isdwSj17ho
— Dij (@khadija_sankoh) March 13, 2020
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