In 2016 I wrote a piece for The AIMN, Only in America: Looking at Trump from ‘Down Under’ (which was also published by the popular American blog, Crooks and Liars). The following paragraph early in the piece explained the title.
Again, I had better pause lest you fail to grasp where I am heading. In Australia we have a saying, “Only in America.” It’s a phrase we use when something outrageously good or bad happens, as though such excesses can occur only in America. It might be violent racism, another Columbine, kids being slaughtered – any preventable, tragic loss of life that repeats time and again for which no remedy is forthcoming. All of this is beyond the average Australian’s capacity to understand. In contrast, we also use “Only in America” as a term of endearment when some outstanding achievement occurs: a significant scientific breakthrough, a sporting record, a foot touching the moon’s surface.
I went on at length to use the phrase in the context of electing Donald Trump President of the United States of America.
If you are in the habit of reading the American news as I am then you will be aware that President Trump has really put his foot in it this time.
The reporting from both sides of the media has been of universal condemnation.
Since the coronavirus revealed itself to a world mostly preoccupied with how they would finance their living from month to month, Donald Trump, with his usual bullshit and lies, has been inventing, or at least trying to invent, a world that is far from the reality of what damage this virus is capable of doing to the health and wealth of the world’s citizens.
Covid-19 is real and America isn’t immune from it and no amount of shouting fake news will make it go away.
Trump’s response was predictable:
So much FAKE NEWS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020
At his dumbfounding press conference last Thursday it was obvious his lies, fake news and “their out to get me defense” rhetoric went over like a lead balloon.
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It is in the smallness of the mind that true ignorance can be found.
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Quoting again from my piece:
From Down Under we see a sick deluded man of no redeeming features, full of racial hatred, bile and misogyny. A deluded pathetic liar unsuitable for the highest office in the land, if not the world.
He sees complex problems and impregnates them with populism and implausible black and white solutions.
He is a person of limited intellect and understanding only capable of seeing the world through the prism of his own wealth. The far edges of knowledge seem to have passed him by. Matters requiring deep philosophical consideration seem beyond him.
Trumps’ handling of the coronavirus emergency has been so bad that it may have ended his presidency. That’s not just a loan voice from Down Under, just read the American media.
Questions have been raised, writes Peter Wehner for The Atlantic, about fiascos in:
“… diagnostic testing, not testing enough people, and the delay in doing so together with problems in the supply chain. The delay in expanding testing to labs outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and problems in the supply chain.”
Judging from Trump’s demeanor at the press conference he has completely lost control of the emergency that is this coronavirus.
It would be an understatement that the USA is following the rest of the world but that is the truth of the matter.
The virus entered customs, and passed through the checkpoints a few weeks before the Americans discovered it. Now they are at the back on the queue.
Trump reportedly didn’t take early warning advice from about the severity of the virus … and that an outbreak was predictable.
You can add to that the fact that it was Trump who dismantled the National Security Council’s Global Health Office (no doubt because Obama formed it) whose job it was to warn of such outbreaks.
Is it any wonder that not only the media but also the general public are furious with the President?
The master of misinformation has claimed that America had contained the virus, “shut it down,” when the facts suggest it was spreading. Watch his speech on YouTube.
He said testing was available when it obviously wasn’t. The same about a vaccine that is at least a year away.
On top of that he couldn’t resist the Obama administration being responsible for something and it was that they impeded testing.
The master liar said the deaths in Italy were going down when in actual fact they were dramatically increasing.
He reached new heights when he admitted that he wanted to keep a cruise ship, off the California coast, rather than tying it up so that the count of reported cases of the coronavirus would be exaggeratedly low.
He said all these deplorable things one week and declared an emergency the next. Now there’s a leader for you.
The Oval Office speech did nothing to reassure the American people that he was on top of the emergency. It did nothing for the financial markets except turn them into a nose-dive. He even misrepresented his government’s policies.
It was a Murphy’s Law speech. Whatever could go wrong, did. The whole country woke the next day wondering what had happened. He had put the fear of God on them.
From Down Under we see a sick deluded man of no redeeming features, one full of racial hatred, bile and misogyny. A gullible pathetic liar unsuitable for the highest office in the land, if not the world.
He sees complex problems and impregnates them with populism and implausible black and white solutions.
He is a person of limited intellect and understanding only capable of seeing the world through the prism of his own wealth.
The far edges of knowledge seem to have passed him by. Matters requiring deep philosophical consideration seem beyond him.
If the coronavirus emergency is an example of his leadership in a crisis then God help us. I may be wrong, but this time confronted with issues of their own health I think the American people will see him for the fool that he is.
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My thought for the day
The Office of the American President was once viewed by its people as an office of prestige and importance. Trump has reduced it to one of ridicule and contempt.
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