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Stephen Gottlieb: Trump’s Malfeasance Goes Viral

I read the Times’ description of the Administration’s snafus through my tears because every snafu meant a large number of unnecessary deaths.

Warnings reached America in early January from Trump’s appointees, but he didn’t trust them. Warnings came from people who dedicated their lives to protecting the rest of us, who’d become experts and never gave a fig for what they could earn in private industry, because they were dedicated to protecting us, dedicated to the God’s honest truth, not to anyone’s political fortunes. So Trump labeled them the “deep state” and ignored them too.

Public health works by moving fast to contain and avoid disasters. It took a month for him to stop some travel from China. Then he took a victory lap while the virus spread. People kept trying to alert him, but he waited because it wouldn’t make his economic messaging look good. How many people had to lay down their lives for his political messaging?

National security, medical and public health experts, people in contact with doctors in China and elsewhere, watched the virus explode and kept urging action. But still he dallied, telling everyone this would blow over. God must have decided America needed some humility, so he sent us an idiot for a president.

Delay made everything harder and costlier. Sheltering in place got harder and longer because of how far the virus had been allowed to spread. Many have already died. Many couldn’t shelter in place – doctors, nurses and everyone who makes hospitals function; and others who do critically important jobs, as aides in nursing homes, people stocking grocery shelves, making deliveries or picking up garbage – all take risks daily. The poor are not in position to survive lengthy periods of unemployment. And they’ll be the first to die when his majesty decides we should go back to our places of work and play. He’s eliminated any good choices for the great mass of Americans. Working or staying home, many will die or lose their jobs and starve. Time and delay matter. Late steps don’t erase earlier failures – they leave us chasing an ever bigger problem.

The people most at risk are the very people he doesn’t want to help. Billions for corporate welfare but pennies for the poor. He’s turning on the mass of Americans, including many who thought he’d change things in their favor. Apparently, we’re all socialists now – Trump and Republicans are socialists for the rich, doing everything government can do for them, while Biden, Sanders, Warren and the Democrats are trying to provide for the rest of us, for those who need the help.

After 9/11, I explained to a Republican congressman that his rural constituents also suffered from the attack because friends and family had found jobs in the big city. The congressman’s response to me was “I didn’t think of that.” Pandemics are different. They spread; they don’t stop at state or community lines.

The Constitution doesn’t stop us from electing fools and misanthropes. It will always be up to us. I could say “God help us,” but God, for whatever reason, leaves it to us to help ourselves. This has been hard to write. It may have been hard to hear. But the best thing Trump could do for America is to resign.

Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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