Trump is peddling snake oil
His televised briefings make clear that he’s a charlatan
News Analysis
By Steven A Cohen
President Trump’s brazen efforts to make it appear that he responded forcefully to the COVID-19 pandemic are nothing more than public relations tactics.
The latest scheme, according to news reports, is a plan to have his name appear on about 76 million checks being sent by the IRS to people who are not having their government stimulus checks direct deposited into their bank accounts. The Washington Post reported this the same evening that Trump opened his nightly self- congratulatory, rambling, prime-time “news” briefing about all he allegedly has done to protect the public with a propaganda video worthy of a Third World dictator. That’s appropriate, because the administration’s response to the pandemic is what might be expected in a Third World country.
With the United States leading the world in COVID-19 cases and deaths, Trump has dropped all pretense that his briefings are intended for any purpose other than self-promotion. He opens with a statement that he reads poorly, which suggests this was the first time he’d seen it. Recently, he’s been the entire show — no one with any actual expertise is allowed to speak. Trump attacks the character of reporters who ask pointed questions, and while claiming incorrectly that the Constitution gives him the power to restart the economy, he evades responsibility, saying most recently that he has “authorized” the governors to make the decisions for their own states. The whole show is utter nonsense, broadcast live at a time when most viewers probably are sitting down to dinner. Their local news programs have been pre-empted for weeks by Trump’s self-serving “briefings,” which are a clear sign of desperation.
With the economy shut down, Trump has nothing to run on in November’s election. Reality upends his PR tactics. In an updated report on the world’s economic outlook (issued April 14), the International Monetary Fund forecast a recession deeper than any since the Great Depression.
“The world has been put in a Great Lockdown. … The magnitude and speed of collapse in activity that has followed is unlike anything experienced in our lifetimes,” says Gita Gopinath, chief economist at the IMF.
“This is a crisis like no other. … Under the assumption that the pandemic and required containment peaks in the second quarter for most countries in the world, and recedes in the second half of this year…, we project global growth in 2020 to fall to minus 3 percent. This is a downgrade of 6.3 percentage points from January 2020, a major revision over a very short period.
“This makes the Great Lockdown the worst recession since the Great Depression, and far worse than the Global Financial Crisis” of 2008, Gopinath says.
The report projects the United States to experience minus 5.9 percent growth, while the eurozone will see minus 7.5 percent. “The cumulative loss to global GDP (gross domestic products) over 2020 and 2021 from the pandemic crisis could be around $9 trillion, greater than the economies of Japan and Germany, combined,” the IMF said.
Meanwhile, retail sales plunged 8.9 percent in the U.S. in March, the steepest decline since government tracking began in 1992.
Trump’s eagerness to quickly reopen the country understandably reflects what most Americans want, but at what price? And for what reasons? The president eschews real knowledge in favor of his “gut,” which evidently told him to ignore early warnings of a pandemic. In the fourth year of his term — and after he dismantled the White House office that had been created to deal with threats to public health — he claims to have “inherited” a government incapable of responding. He wants undeserved credit for everything positive that anyone encounters and tries to shed responsibility like a duck sheds water. For example, he’s now blaming the World Health Organization for his own failure to recognize the brewing crisis, and he’s withholding American funding for WHO — to the shock of governments around the globe.
Trump’s presidency is a disaster, for America and the world. It’s easy enough to see that he’s a charlatan. Even his base must be shrinking by now.
