DEFENDING PRESIDENT TRUMP, Well kind of, ummm not really

 

There’s been a lot of criticism of Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the media and from Democrats, but has the coverage actually been fair? I doubt anyone, maybe other than Trump himself, would try to argue that the President’s response has been perfect. This has been an unprecedented crisis. I think it’s pretty safe to speculate that Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden would have also made missteps along the way if they’d been in the driver’s seat. In this article I’m going to look at some of the commentary on Trump’s handling of the crisis to evaluate where valid points have been made and where it’s crossed the line into partisan spin.

One of the main criticisms of President Trump’s performance has been his reluctance to do anything in the early days of the pandemic. I’ve seen many comments that the President did nothing at the onset of this crisis with a clear implication that if we only had a moderately competent President, we could have largely avoided most of what’s happened over the last couple of months. The problem with this claim is that Trump issued significant travel restrictions on 31 January for foreign nationals who had been in China and mandated health screening and quarantines for those exempted from the travel restrictions. Whether or not Trump did enough is a legitimate issue, however the claims that he did nothing that some on the lex have made on social media are hard to justify.

Likewise, the idea that we could have avoided all these “stay at home” orders and social distancing requirements if a competent person was in the White House also seems to be misguided, especially in light of some of the recent facts that have emerged about the early spread of the disease in America. It was only in early January that the world became fully aware of this new virus and within 2 weeks we were diagnosing our first cases in America and about a week after that we identified the first non-travel related case. Approximately 500,000 people traveled from China to America in December and January, before the travel restrictions and there’s been an additional 20,000 monthly since the restrictions were put in place. Additionally, over a million people traveled from Europe during the critical months of December and January. It’s believed the first cases of COVID-19 in NY came from Europe rather than China. The idea that there was anything the President could have done to prevent the crisis in America isn’t realistic.

So, it isn’t fair to say the President did nothing about the pandemic early on and implying there’s something President Trump could have done to avoid the pandemic is unwarranted, but this doesn’t necessarily mean the President’s response has been effective. President Trump seems to have believed that the travel restrictions were going to keep the virus out of America and was reluctant to push for widespread testing because he was concerned about the political implication. This was in contrast to the advice he was receiving from our infectious disease experts warning it was inevitable that it would spread to America and that an effective testing program was essential to keeping it under control. The travel restrictions were a prudent step, but it was clear even at the time that it was closing the gate after the horses had bolted. Given what we’ve learned about the early spread of the virus in America it’s unlikely anyone could have prevented it from taking a large toll, but Trump’s failure to take aggressive action early on, especially on testing, continues to hamper our response today. In order to safely start to reopen the nation’s businesses we need to double our testing capacity and have an army of trained workers to track down people who have been exposed to the virus. This would have taken strong federal leadership to accomplish. That leadership has been lacking and as a result we’re nowhere close to being ready to keep the virus under control after lifting the stay-at-home orders making a second wave of COVID-19 deaths much more likely.

Some of the criticism of the President wasn’t objectively accurate, but what about the President’s own statements about his early response to the crisis. He has stated that he was the first leader to implement a travel ban, this is completely inaccurate. First, he didn’t implement a ban at all, only a travel restriction. That’s an important distinction because we continued to have 10s of thousands of people traveling from China to America even after Trump implemented the travel measures. A total travel ban probably wasn’t realistic, but Trump has claimed that the people who did travel were screened and tested before being allowed in, but this isn’t true. At most they had a quick temperature scan and often even that didn’t happen. More importantly though America wasn’t even close to the first country to impose travel restrictions, we were about the 40th. Even if you limit it to major countries the U.S. and most other large countries imposed travel restrictions at about the same time. In reality the timing and nature of our travel restrictions were about the same as most other major countries. Trump’s claim that he was the first to impose a travel ban is completely false.

Trump has also claimed that the Democrats were highly critical of his decision to restrict travel from China, this is likewise inaccurate. None of the Democratic Presidential candidates or Congressional leaders criticized the travel restrictions. There were some on Facebook and a few far-left Congressmen that voiced criticism, but the vast majority of the Democratic party didn’t have a problem with the restrictions. Some Democrats did comment that restricting travel alone wasn’t sufficient, which of course turned out to be true. Trump has even claimed his own advisors told him not to implement the ban and that it was his bold decision in the face of this opposition that saved thousands of lives. The truth is there was widespread agreement among the medical experts advising the President that the travel restrictions were needed. The fact that he made a sound decision concerning the travel restrictions based on the best medical advice is something he should be playing up, but instead he had to create a fictional narrative making himself the lone hero of the story.

Trump’s claim that his brave decision to impose the travel ban saved a lot of people is also suspect. Like I already stated the virus was already spreading in the American population at the time so Trump’s belief that it would stop the virus was mistaken, however it likely did buy some time. If Trump had put all the resources at his disposal towards increasing testing capacity, obtaining ventilators and increasing our stockpile of masks and other PPE there could have been some validity to that argument. Unfortunately, Trump’s initial reluctance to listen to his infectious disease experts and treat this as a national emergency resulted in that time being largely wasted. It’s difficult to quantify the number of lives saved by the travel restrictions. However, given that he simply did as he was advised to do and what most other countries were already doing, then squandered that opportunity to prepare for the domestic spread of the virus, I think the question becomes how many lives were lost by his failure to capitalize on the travel restrictions rather than how many lives were saved.

Up to this point I’ve focused on Trump’s initial actions in response to the pandemic. His subsequent actions follow a similar pattern of occasionally listening to the medical advisors and taking reasonable action followed by multiple ill-advised or plain ignorant statements and actions. Like normal those on the lex tend to be quicker to fault missteps than they are to acknowledge his prudent actions. The Coronavirus Task Force (CTF) Trump assembled has been competent, even drawing praise from many Democrats. In fact, much of the criticism of the CTF has come from the right who seem convinced the pandemic is a media invention. Trump’s concern for the effects of the stay-at-home orders on the economy is easy to understand, but despite this he extended the recommendations for continued social distancing through the end of April and his phased plan to reopen the economy makes a lot of sense. The problem is that every time he does something reasonable he utters multiple lies and wildly irresponsible speculations based on what he wants to be true rather than what the evidence actually supports. We routinely see Trump take the podium to say something that’s hard to describe as anything other than crazy only to have other members of his Coronavirus Task Force take the podium to directly contradict him.

Rather than list all of Trump’s bizarre Coronavirus statements and actions I’m going to summarize the fundamental problem with how Trump is handling this crisis. I have two main issues to take with his response thus far. First, he has treated this as primarily a political problem. Every new development that comes out goes through a filter to determine how it affects his re-election rather than what is the best action to take for the American people. The second and more significant criticism I have is his lack of consistency. He’ll say one thing today and the exact opposite thing tomorrow without even acknowledging the change in positions. We’ve seen frustration even among Republicans who want to support the President but his constantly shifting positions make it impossible to know which position they’re supposed to support today. The President needs to be a consistent, calm and reliable source of information for the country, but he’s been the exact opposite of that. These two criticisms are related, if he was treating this first and foremost as a medical emergency then his positions would be more consistent because the advice from people like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx has been pretty steady. Trump’s perception of the political implications of the virus swings wildly from day to day resulting in the manic policy fluctuations we’ve repeatedly seen. Ironically, Trump’s insistence on treating this primarily as a re-election issue and his resulting erratic public statements have eroded his initial bump in the polls.

So yes, there have been times when Democrats, especially those in the lex-wing of the party haven’t been entirely fair in characterizing the President’s COVID-19 response. That’s not at all surprising, it’s not like the Republicans were a tower of virtue when criticizing President Obama for 8 years. However, Trump’s main problem hasn’t been the Democrats, it’s been his own chaotic public statements and continually shifting policy direction that have created uncertainty even among those who typically support him. Although it’s not fair to say Trump has done nothing or hasn’t done anything correctly in dealing with the Coronavirus epidemic, the President’s erratic and indecisive behavior has been at best the bare minimum we should expect from a President and more objectively should be characterized as a systematic failure in leadership.