This is what baffles me about Trump supporters. Trump is clearly shit at actually getting things done if he's not surrounded by yes-men. It was really obvious from the start that he isn't somebody you want in charge when something goes wrong. So policy aside, he doesn't meet the minimal standards of competency that we should expect from a president.

Honestly, I didnt expect him to drop the ball this hard on a crisis like the coronavirus. I thought that his protective instincts would shine through much earlier, both on public health and the economy. And yes, you can all laugh at me now and call me a cultist and say "I told you so".

To be fair though, the governments of other big countries like Spain, the UK, the Netherlands or Germany havent reacted much differently and also dropped the ball quite hard. Merkel's communication on the issue, for example, was coming too late, was wishy-washy and irritating rather than reassuring. Not as confused as Trump's little speech Wednesday night, but still not good at all.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 13 2020 05:32pm

The only thing he knows is businesses scams and tax evasions, no interest beside TV shows and golf.
GL handling pandemics which require some kind of global knowledge and method, many populists are like that.
I still respect the choice of american people tho, but here we can see that "technocrats" are not the worst ones.

/e i may note here that chinese "politicians" are mostly ... scientists and engineers.

So GL with the turbo orange fucker.

This post was edited by Saucisson6000 on Mar 13 2020 06:16pm

He's tried to create his own alternative reality the past 3 years, and a lot of the time it worked. His propagandists at Fox, talk radio, and Congress made it happen. But when granny is dying, the "fake news" and "democratic hoax" claims only go so far.

If you understand his personality style, and how he's behaved for the past several years, this isn't a surprise at all.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/peter-wehner-trump-presidency-over/607969/

If You didn't expect him to flail in a crisis you have a fundamental problem with how you assess politicians.

He has been making excuses for the dumbest shit and holding everybody else to impossibly high standards for a long time now.

The notion of medical rationing is terrifying. We've never faced that in the US before en masse.

This post was edited by EndlessSky on Mar 13 2020 07:09pm

I never expected him to be great at handling something like a public health crisis, it's just that I didnt expect him to be quite as lost and undetermined in this situation. Where is the fighting spirit, where is the determination? He made a wrong assessment initially, and then took too long to acknowledge his mistake and reverse course rhetorically. Fine. But now that he has realized the severity of the situation, I would have expected a forceful response. Why doesnt he just order the measures his experts tell him to do, and sell them as his idea? He could still salvage the situation for himself and get out of this with just a few bruises to his public image, perhaps losing a few percentage points of approval. Instead, he's like a deer caught in the headlights.


Still, as I said: a lot of world leaders were caught on the wrong foot by the coronavirus, not just Trump. For example, Johnson's and Merkel's weaknesses have been exposed by their subpar response to this crisis just as much as Trump's.




Yeah, sure, the Never Trumpers are having a field day with this. Calling the Trump presidency over is still way too early. Particularly since he'll be running for reelection against an unsteady guy with frequent episodes of senility and dementia rage.

I mean, did they find shit? of course. did it live up to even a bit of what we all assumed could be there? no.

it was a failed attempt at collusion in the trump tower meeting and then ancillary crimes stemming from obstruction on a level that wasn't worth impeaching imo.

that's not to say the senate ever did the right thing, they wouldn't have impeached no matter what. but if I was sitting there I likely wouldn't have voted for it either, especially that late in a term.