Empty Shelves at a store cleaned out by customers fearing isolation due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
BEWARE TRUMP’S ‘WARTIME’ POWERS
Coronavirus may enable him to put off election
News Analysis
By Steven A Cohen
It appears that even President Trump now recognizes the economy won’t be easing him into a second term. That’s why, after dragging his feet for so long, he has come to embrace trillion-dollar plans to keep the country afloat while the Coronavirus sweeps across the landscape. He has been behind the curve, denying reality every step of the way, and he has proved himself incapable of providing the leadership that the world expects of the American president.
I may be opening myself up to a charge of cynicism, but I‘m pretty sure Trump’s main consideration regarding the Coronavirus pandemic is how to use it to extend his time in office. That’s one reason he uses his daily media briefings as a substitute for the rallies he no longer is able to hold.
Trump needs to be made to understand — as soon as possible and no matter what else is happening in November — that the American people will not accept an emergency order under his “wartime powers” delaying the election. Responsible people in government ought to be working now on ways to safely carry out the election if the virus and interference by Russia remain as threats.
Trump clearly has a personality disorder that makes him shallow. He accepts responsibility for nothing, yet he demands that sycophants give him credit for any development that can be construed as positive. One might feel sympathy for Trump, considering the criticism he constantly is subject to — except for the fact that Hitler had a similar personality disorder, and Trump is currently the most powerful person on the planet.
The New York Times reports that a paper prepared by the administration expects the pandemic to last 18 months or longer, and the country will face widespread shortages. The infection could come in “multiple waves” that would strain consumers and the nation’s health-care system, the Times said. The actions the Coronavirus report proposed includes invoking emergency wartime powers that allow the president to require industries to produce more goods that are in short supply. That included tanks during the Korean War; it’s ventilators, face masks and other medical supplies now. The Times said the 100-page report was distributed to administration officials shortly before a news conference March 13 at which Trump acknowledged the severity of the situation after failing to do so previously. The administration also was talking with Congress about a $1 trillion-plus stimulus plan to bail out the airline and other industries, provide assistance to small businesses, and send up to $2,000 in direct payments to taxpayers.
These are scary times, especially with Donald Trump as president and Mitch McConnell as majority leader in the Senate. Plans and talk, which the president reports on daily, aren’t action. Yet Trump gives himself a “10” on his response to the Coronavirus outbreak.
“We’re at war, and we’re fighting an invisible enemy,” Trump says at his briefings, while predicting an “enormous victory” and the return to a strong economy more quickly than the experts predict. The briefings are completely disconnected from what is reported by the states — where governors and health care workers complain that they can’t even get an adequate supply of face masks. Under the administration’s plan, the country is supposed to be shut down for only 15 days. What happens after that isn’t clear.
Trump is the only United States president that I’m aware of who routinely lies. His lies and crude behavior as president for more than three years have instilled distrust in government and disgust among Americans and allies alike. McConnell is Trump’s enabler in the Senate. He has blocked hundreds of House-passed bills that would benefit most Americans. He single-handedly blocked President Obama’s choice to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court and pushed through two right-wing Trump appointees to the court. He and Trump are currently remaking the federal judiciary. McConnell has pushed through Senate approval of more than 150 right-wing candidates to the bench nominated by Trump; some of them were found unqualified for the lifetime appointments by the American Bar Association, which the president has cut out of the process. McConnell brags about the damage he’s done to America’s democracy. It was he, of course, who was responsible for holding Republicans together in Trump’s recent impeachment trial.
This president’s behavior fits the criteria of a sociopath, which include pathological lying, lack of remorse, shame or guilt, the appearance of charm as a cover for hostile and domineering behavior and humiliation of victims. It also includes a grandiose sense of self, and outrage over insignificant matters while unmoved by what would upset a normal person; callousness and a lack of empathy and an impulsive nature.
Past being prologue, it’s apparent that when the time comes, Trump will do whatever he thinks is necessary to avoid being voted out of office. Theoretically, that could include an emergency declaration postponing the election — ostensibly in order to protect the public from coming into contact with the Coronavirus. His judicial appointees may support him. McConnell was recently reported to be inviting judges to retire, in order to stuff the federal district and appeals courts with even more Trump backers.
Once out of office, the president will no longer be above the law, as he believes he is now, based on a Justice Department memo written years ago and enforced by Attorney General William Barr, who lied to the public about the president’s culpability in the Mueller report. Trump knows he’ll be called to account once he is out of office, which is the apparent reason he is seeking to normalize corruption by pardoning some of the nation’s best-known white-collar crooks. Now that Trump is calling himself a wartime president, expect him to play the role to the hilt — except when it comes to making demands of industry. And if he finagles another four years in office, expect to see Donald Trump Jr. on the ballot in 2024. After all, he’s as qualified to be president as his father; it will keep his father free from prosecution, and it will make it abundantly clear that the Republican Party has become the Trump Party in everything but name.
