We rethink the week with Val Endress, professor of political communications, Rhode Island College; Rick Newman, lobbyist and former NH state representative; and Dean Spiliotis, Civic Scholar and Presidential Scholar at Southern New Hampshire University.
IS TRUMP CREATING EVEN MORE DISASTER FOR THE U.S. AND THE WORLD?
We discuss Donald Trump’s downward spiral. Starting as a president who cared only about himself and knew nothing about how to govern – but who had a number of “adults in the room” – he is now an incompetent, egocentric, out-of-control commander who has no one around him to help steer the ship of state. And Congress is afraid to challenge his reckless outbursts and actions, leaving our country unable to cope with crises such as the coronavirus pandemic.
The results are heart-breaking: People are getting sick, dying, losing their jobs, their health care, and their homes, no longer able to support their families. Meanwhile, Trump is concerned only with his own reelection campaign and his family’s (and his friends’) businesses. He doesn’t care who his policies hurt, as long as he helps himself and his friends (or harms his enemies).
For example, despite COVID-19 and the national need for people to avoid physical contact (based on scientific facts), the president insisted that West Point (the U.S. Military Academy) call its cadets back to campus, so everything would appear “normal” when Trump addressed their graduation. He then demanded that the cadets sit together – nice and “tight” – because it might not look “normal” if they sat six feet apart to protect their health.
OPTICS UBER ALLES
Trump cares only about “the look” – how events will “look” to potential voters when they watch him perform at his photo ops. It doesn’t seem to matter that he’d be endangering the lives of America’s future military officers in order to achieve “the look” he wants for his publicity coverage.
Now, frighteningly, Pres. Trump suggests (without any scientific basis) that people might fight off COVID-19 if they drink or ingest disinfectant. [You can’t make this stuff up!] So we’re seeing a doubling of calls to the poison hotline because many people have actually followed the president’s advice. Maybe the poison will disappear miraculously if the victims bathe their bodies in a lot of “very powerful light.”
WHY CAN’T WE KEEP OUR EYE ON THE BALL?
Finally, we discuss how the media and the public are being distracted from the real news by the president’s tweets, press conference musings, and other antics. For example, while Trump was talking about drinking Clorox, there was hardly any press coverage for a major change in the fight between “real” news and “fake” news. At long last, the Republican Senate confirmed that the Russians did, in fact, interfere in our 2016 election – interference which Trump and his echo chamber had been denying for four years. This was an important news story – especially after the Mueller investigation and the impeachment trial – but Trump’s unscientific coronavirus musings kept this important admission out of the news.
Of course, this has been part and parcel of the Trump administration’s strategy since taking office. Trump’s appointees have been dismantling America’s government programs – such as environmental protections, public health preparedness, regulating corporate excesses, protecting consumers from fraud – while the president’s misstatements, boasts, and demonizing of other people have served as their useful decoy. With the pandemic now filling up all the oxygen in the news room, the administration and its allies in Congress have raised their game to a new level. They’ve announced that they will be shutting down all immigration into the U.S. They’re talking about destroying the U.S. Postal Service. Trump tells his administrators to withhold federal assistance from any states whose governors have criticized him. They even suggest that the states and municipalities might as well go bankrupt.
