Sometime early last week, when the number of COVID-19 fatalities in the US exceeded 55,000 and infections crossed nine lakh, Americans woke up to a kooky email. “Can you keep a secret?” it asked. The mail was from Donald J Trump for President, Inc. and the Republican National Committee. The secret? A “HUGE” surprise birthday gift for first lady Melania Trump.
“I want to surprise her with a birthday card signed by 1 MILLION Americans from all around the Country,” it read. It also asked them to fill in their personal details. Closing the window led to a pop-up asking for four more years of a Trump presidency. For Donald J Trump, it was business as usual. No wonder, the majority of Americans are horrified.
Four more years of a racist reality show host and dodgy property developer who recommends injecting household disinfectant into lungs of patients and shining UV light inside their bodies as a coronavirus cure would’ve been a stand-up hoot wasn’t it for the fact that it was real advice coming from the President of the United States, the head of the most powerful country in the world. The hashtag #TrumpDeathCult started trending on Twitter immediately after the Lysol prescription.
Any president’s dream in election year is to dominate the news cycle. Trump is doing exactly that. But not in the way he and his shrinking power circle in the White House want. The unravelling of Trump doesn’t bode well for America’s position as the world’s top superpower. Agrees Lalit Mansingh, former Indian Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to the US, “The platform on which Trump won the elections was ‘America First’. All his policies have been in America’s interest. He has clearly not played the global role the world expected of him.”
INTIMATIONS OF GLOBAL DECLINE
It was World War II, which turned the US into the fulcrum of leadership for the West and many geopolitically important Third World nations. By entering the war on the side of Britain and the Allies, the US turned the tide against Nazi and Axis armies. It unleashed nuclear power for the first and only time in history. It became the bulwark of democracy against Communism and Soviet global ambition. It had men on the moon before anyone else could.
The US dominated the world; by taking over British bases everywhere, the US Navy literally controlled all trade routes and posed a deterrent to hostiles. President Franklin D Roosevelt’s economic moves during the Great Depression made the US the world’s most powerful economy. Its leadership of NATO, fiduciary influence in the UN and other agencies, military interventions in civil war-ridden countries, the War against Terror, Silicon Valley clout, Climate Accord—America was the leader and its presidents the face of its global leadership. Except for President Woodrow Wilson’s Trump-like handling of the Spanish flu, every modern US president’s superintendence of H2N2, Swine flu, AIDS, SARS, H1N1, Zika and Ebola, initial hiccups notwithstanding, set the template for other nations combating disease.
America taught the world. America learned from the world. Today America teaches the world Trumpism: a Pandora’s portmanteau of racist, xenophobic, corrupt, immature, naïve, sycophantic, contemptuous, hostile lashouts. “I don’t think it’s about America’s leadership in the world; it’s rather about Trump’s leadership of America which will have global consequences. This situation is widely perceived to be the result of Trump’s mismanagement of the (corona) crisis. This will have ripple effects as far as America’s global standing is concerned,” says Harsh V Pant, Director, Studies & Head, Strategic Studies Programme, Observer Research Foundation, Delhi.
TARGETING HEALTHCARE
Donald Trump hates what he doesn’t understand; in this case Science. His antipathy has made America the world’s pandemic leader. Infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm has warned that the final death toll in the US could be around 800,000, 16 times from late April. As far back in 2016, the outgoing Obama administration had cautioned Team Trump of an incoming pandemic, and gave a step-by-step guide to deal with its impact. It was ignored; paradoxically, Trump unsuccessfully tried to blame Obama for the current crisis. In May 2018, the White House pandemic response team was disbanded because it was set up by Obama. In November 2019, Trump brushed away the US military’s tip about a devastating epidemic from China—in 2017, he had given millions to the Wuhan Virology Institute. The same year, the Department of Homeland Security stopped updating its annual models of pandemic devastation on America’s critical infrastructure.
Last year, the advice of American medical experts in WHO—to which Trump horrifyingly decided to cut off funding in the middle of the contagion—who cautioned him about an imminent coronavirus pandemic was junked. In January, US government experts warned that the virus would spread beyond China and become a global pandemic. Trump pooh-poohed them. Ever since he entered the White House, he has targeted healthcare. He shut down the National Security Council’s global health security, closed the $30-million Complex Crisis Fund and reduced national health spending by $15 billion. Today, it has come back to bite the US and Trump. The $308-billion bailout for COVID-19-hit small businesses has greatly benefitted the billionaire club: one of the beneficiaries was Fisher Island off the Miami coast whose beaches are made from sand imported from the Bahamas and residents earn on average $2.2 million a year.
FALSEHOODS THAT HOODWINKED AMERICA
Trump’s conduct is the perfect manual for How to Destroy America. He reacted only two days after January 20, when the Center of Disease Control (CDC) confirmed the first coronavirus case in the US. Even then he lied on TV, “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” Two weeks later, Trump still hadn’t named a White House official to coordinate the administration’s virus response.
On March 4, he sent the country into a tailspin after telling Fox News that based on a “hunch”, expert estimates of COVID-19 death rate were all wrong. On January 29, economic adviser Peter Navarro had sent a memo warning of 543,000 American deaths. Trump took no action, saying he was already being briefed by China—a downright lie. When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar warned him about the pandemic’s destructive potential, Trump called him “alarmist”. As the contagion picked up speed, Trump refused to shut down incoming flights from Europe where COVID-19 was killing hundreds by the day. By then faulty test kits from CDC were being recalled or re-tested—the shortage still continues.
On Valentine’s Day, when corona fatalities had reached over 1,000, Trump fibbed to National Border Control Council that only around 12 people were infected and that “Many of them are getting better… So we’re in very good shape.” He reiterated the same lie during his India visit. He also said that a vaccine was due ‘relatively soon’—a claim rejected by Dr Anthony Fauci, a chief medical expert on the coronavirus task force who had advised five presidents in his career. Trumpists and Fox News anchors, who had dismissed the virus as a “hoax” perpetrated by the Democrats, called for Fauci’s firing. Testing, which has been privatised by now, wasn’t matching the viral spread.
America is in the full grip of a healthcare crisis but Trump has resorted to his patent crisis-fighting archetype: shift the blame and politicise the cause. He sabotaged medical help to Democrat-run cities and states, took away test kits and fired up his base by calling COVID-19 ‘China Virus’. “The kind of polarisation America is passing through is the reason why his presidency became possible in the first place. And I have not seen any reason to believe that the polarisation is declining,” says Pant.
As the country descended into panic and tragedy, ‘Dr Trump’ pushed hydroxychloroquine as the “game-changer” cure; he arm-twisted other countries, including India, to export the drug to the US. He fired Rick Bright, the government’s top vaccine expert, for refusing to direct money toward hydroxychloroquine, one of several “potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections”. Since clinical trials proved its ineffectiveness and dangerous side-effects, Trump has dialled it down. Unemployment—26.4 million as per the latest report—skyrocketed but welfare checks were held up to print Trump’s signature on them. Aware of the economic fallout on his election prospects, the President called for Civil War in his own country against the lockdown. “Liberate Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia,” he tweeted. By last week, the president was coming apart at the seams. He attacked the Republican Georgia Governor, Brian Kemp, for heeding his own advice to open Georgia.
PATHOLOGY OF A PRESIDENT
Many in Trump’s administration suspect that he is unhinged—a potentially disastrous prospect since his finger is on the button of thousands of nuclear warheads. During the impeachment process, mental health professionals warned that the president’s mental health was deteriorating rapidly. A petition signed by a Yale psychiatrist and a top CIA profiler read, “He is unable to take responsibility for any error, mistake, or failing. His default in the situation is to blame others and to attack the perceived source of his humiliation.
These attacks of narcissistic rage can be brutal and destructive.” The diagnosis of psychologist and psychotherapist John Gartner, who contributed to the bestseller The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, is that the president is a “malignant narcissist” whose “democidal behavior” delights in hurting and killing a multitude of people, including his own supporters. When emergency hotlines saw a spike in calls regarding the president’s advice to drink disinfectant, he denied responsibility; “can’t imagine why,” he added.
Trump’s hatred of officials who don’t play along is part of this pathology: he lambasted Health and Human Services Inspector General Christi Grimm for publishing a report critical of the federal coronavirus response calling it “Another Fake Dossier”. He sacked inspector general Glenn Fine, who was overseeing coronavirus relief. Now, the White House has found a scapegoat in a junior official for the drink bleach fiasco. Persuaded by advisors, who include son-in-law Jared Kushner who has zero experience in epidemic control, the experts were either fired or cowed into silence.
MINIMISING AMERICA’S GLOBAL RELEVANCE
The chaos Trump has sown has begun to tilt the global status quo against the US. China, which has brought its viral load under control, is jockeying to take America’s place. (Trump owes state-owned Bank of China $211 million). India is making plans to woo China-based manufacturing while protecting itself from hostile investments. Europe’s leaders have woken up to the sudden gap in world leadership, which Trumpian anarchy has created: French President Emmanuel Macron is en route to filling the void. In mid-April, he issued a statesman-like call for a worldwide ceasefire from Afghanistan to Syria to Iraq to Yemen. Of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, four are claimed to be with Macron. With America’s only ally UK in Brexit limbo, whether Europe will return to its powerful pre-World War II global position is an open game.
The polls are predicting an alarming dip in Trump’s chances of a second term, primarily due to his bungling, insensitivity and untruths. The virus is yet to impact his base in the red states with large rural populations, which have poor connectivity, high rates of heart disease, obesity and poverty. Republicans are spreading the narrative that COVID-19 is a Democratic Party creation. “A substantial majority still believes in what Trump is doing. The protests in various cities to open up the economy are by his supporters. Clearly his vote bank at the moment remains intact,” explains Pant. Trumpists in denial is more than just belief in Trump, writes US history professor Ian Reifowitz in AlterNet, “When your identity rests on Trump and his party being right, to admit that they are wrong—or worse, that they don’t even give a rat’s ass about you and yours—requires rethinking everything you are. I guess for some people, dying is easier.”
Should coronavirus become the Grim Reaper of the Bible Belt, Donald Trump’s presidency would be the final victim of the blight of his own creation in America. Meanwhile, the president’s son Eric Trump has asked Americans to stock up on “quarantine wine” from Trump Winery. He tweeted, “The team at @TrumpWinery has you covered if your quarantine wine supply is running low! Check us out.” For the Trumps, COVID-19 is just rosé by any another name.
Team Trump ignored the outgoing Obama administration’s caution against an incoming pandemic and a step-by-step guide to deal with its impact. In 2017, the Department of Homeland Security stopped updating its annual models of pandemic devastation on America's critical infrastructure. In May 2018, the White House pandemic response team was disbanded because it was set up by Obama. In November 2019, Trump dismissed the US military’s tip about a devastating epidemic from China. Last year, the advice of American medical experts in WHO, who cautioned him about an imminent coronavirus pandemic, was junked. The Trump administration shut down the NSC’s global health security, closed the $30-million Complex Crisis Fund and reduced national health spending by $15 billion. The president reacted two days after January 20, when the Center of Disease Control confirmed the first coronavirus case in the US. Two weeks later, he still hadn’t named a White House official to coordinate the administration’s virus response. On January 29, economic adviser Peter Navarro had sent a memo warning of 543,000 American deaths. Trump took no action, saying he was already being briefed by China—a downright lie. On February 14, when global corona fatalities had reached over 1,000, Trump fibbed to National Border Control Council that only around 12 people were infected and that “many of them are getting better… So we’re in very good shape.” On March 4, he sent the country into a tailspin after telling Fox News that based on a “hunch”, expert estimates of COVID-19 death rate were all wrong. When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar warned him about the pandemic’s destructive potential, Trump called him “alarmist”. As the contagion picked up speed, Trump refused to shut down incoming flights from Europe where COVID-19 was killing hundreds by the day. By then faulty test kits from CDC were being recalled or re-tested—the shortage still continues. The president lambasted Health and Human Services Inspector General Christi Grimm for publishing a report critical of the federal coronavirus response, calling it “Another Fake Dossier”. He sacked inspector general Glenn Fine, who was overseeing coronavirus relief. |