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No ‘Packed Churches On Easter’ As Trump Yields On Social Distancing

No ‘Packed Churches On Easter’ As Trump Yields On Social Distancing

Donald Trump extended social distancing guidelines this weekend until at least May, less than a week after saying he thought the nation would be “opened up and just raring to go by Easter.”

During a Monday appearance on Fox News, he said Easter would very likely be the peak of this outbreak, contradicting his earlier claims that the crisis should be done by then.

“We’re doing a lot of things and we don’t want to [end social distancing measures] too soon,” Trump told the network. “Around Easter, that’s going to be the highest point, we think.” He added that he thinks April 30 “is a day where we can see some real progress” and that by June, the death toll will “will be brought to a very low number.”

Despite expert warnings, Trump laid out what he called a “beautiful timeline” last Tuesday, urging that the nation be “opened up and just raring to go by Easter.” Citing his “very special” relationship with the April 12 holiday, he said, “Wouldn’t it be great to have all the churches full? You’ll have packed churches all over our country.”

But Trump’s own medical experts quickly pushed back against this dangerous proposal. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Friday that some states would still be dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic in September.

“Everyone’s timeline is going to be different. Some places haven’t hit their peak yet,” he told ABC. “‘We’re trying to give people the testing data to make informed choices. It doesn’t matter if it’s Easter, Memorial Day, or Labor Day.”

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN Thursday that Trump’s Easter timeline was “an aspirational projection to give people some hope” but that with the number of cases increasing dramatically each day, it was “no time to pull back.”

“You don’t make the timeline. The virus makes the timeline,” he added.

As recently as Wednesday, Trump was attacking his critics for doubting his everything-will-be-fine-soon timeline. “The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success,” he tweeted. “The real people want to get back to work ASAP. We will be stronger than ever before!”

A poll last week showed that the vast majority of Americans did not want to end social distancing until it is safe to do so: 81 percent said social distancing should continue “for as long as is needed, even if it means continued damage to the economy.” Just ten percent said the economy was a greater priority.

As of Monday, Trump administration officials were predicting the COVID-19 outbreak could mean more than 200,000 deaths in the United States. Just one month ago, Trump claimed that the number of cases in the United States would soon be “close to zero.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Trump Boasts Of TV Ratings, Berates Media As Thousands Are Dying

Trump Boasts Of TV Ratings, Berates Media As Thousands Are Dying

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Donald Trump, on Sunday afternoon:

Over 2,300 Americans have now died in the COVID-19 pandemic, due in large part to a government response that was delayed for weeks while Trump, conservative pundits, and his other allies suggested dire warnings of the pandemic’s potential spread were a “hoax” intended to make him look bad. The man is unfit for office; he cannot react to any crisis except as opportunity for self-promotion. Republican leaders continue, even as deaths mount, to offer no pushback to his false claims and incompetent measures.

Why Trump Can’t Restart The Economy Now

Why Trump Can’t Restart The Economy Now

The federal government’s effort to combat the new coronavirus carries an economic price that is getting higher every day — too high, it appears, for President Donald Trump and some of his advisers. They fear a sharp, brutal downturn that could boost unemployment into double-digits, litter the landscape with bankruptcies and doom his reelection bid.

On Monday, the president expressed impatience: “America will, again, and soon, be open for business. Very soon.” His reason: “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.” On Tuesday, he said he “would love to have the country opened up, and just raring to go, by Easter” — April 12.

Having declared himself a “wartime president,” Trump assumes he can unilaterally decide to restart the economy and get Americans back to work, companies back to making money and the stock market back to its previous heights. In truth, most of these matters are not under his control.

He can instruct Americans to return to their old ways. But he will be at odds with governors and mayors who have urged or mandated that businesses close and people remain at home. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot have imposed stringent measures on their own residents and will keep them in place as long as they see fit.

“Pulling back now, in my view for Chicago, does not make sense at all,” Lightfoot said Tuesday. Pritzker makes it clear he’s about as likely to defer to Trump as he is to get a face tattoo. In his Tuesday news conference, Pritzker stressed, “I want to be 100 percent clear about what will drive my decision-making in the weeks ahead: science.”

Elected officials elsewhere are likely to do likewise. As of Tuesday, The New York Times reports, “at least 167 million people in 17 states, 18 counties and 10 cities are being urged to stay home.”

Though Democratic and Republican voters diverge somewhat on the need for action, governors of both parties have taken the lead. Ohio’s Mike DeWine, a Republican, issued a stay-at-home edict Sunday, saying, “I don’t know any other way to describe it other than to say we are at war.” GOP governors in Indiana, Massachusetts and West Virginia have adopted the same policy.

They aren’t likely to reverse course merely to accommodate the president. Democratic governors from New York to California will not hesitate to defy him.

In moments of national crisis, power usually flows to the central government. To some extent, that is happening this time, as Congress scrambles to help shuttered businesses and newly unemployed workers. But we are also seeing the reinvigoration of federalism by state leaders who are making decisions without waiting for guidance from Washington.

Corporate executives and small business people cannot be under any illusions about the challenges created by the virus. The nation’s Big Three car companies shut down production under pressure from the United Auto Workers, which would fight any attempt to resume normal operations.

Anyone who owns a hotel, resort, restaurant, hair salon, bar, workout facility or music venue must realize that it’s one thing to open your doors and quite another to attract customers. It would not be easy for the administration to get elementary and secondary schools to reopen or persuade universities to pack students into dormitories and lecture halls.

The professional sports leagues know that resumption of games before spectators would put their own players, coaches and other personnel at risk and might not sell many tickets. As Yogi Berra once said, “If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them.”

Most Americans have come to understand the need for social distancing and self-isolation. They have learned that exposure to others is dangerous for them and those they care about. As cases of COVID-19 rise, and deaths mount, their aversion to old-fashioned mingling will only increase.

As the epidemic shows up in places where it has not yet been detected, the fear of ordinary Americans will count for more than the desires of the president. The best way to overcome that fear, and its effect on the economy, is to slow the spread of the disease, implement widespread testing and keep hospitals from being fatally swamped. Only then may people feel enough confidence to shift back toward economic life as we knew it.

Trump can tell Americans to go back to life as before. But he may find that what he says doesn’t matter.

Steve Chapman blogs at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chapman. Follow him on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

The Liberal Virtues Of Andrew Cuomo

The Liberal Virtues Of Andrew Cuomo

Every day, as the novel coronavirus spreads lethally across the nation, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is conducting a televised master class in government that has drawn a wide and admiring audience. Lauded for his elevated and candid leadership, he is underlining the absence of any such qualities in the president of the United States right when they are needed most.

Where President Donald Trump so often sounds feckless, egomaniacal and terribly uninformed, Cuomo appears serious, determined and fully in command of the facts. While Trump dithers and tries to escape responsibility, Cuomo asserts his authority and then accepts the inevitable blame for wrenching decisions. It is all too obvious which one is the adult in the room. Trump boasts of his phony greatness, while Cuomo can rattle off a long list of real achievements.

But the stark contrast between these politicians goes beyond their personalities.

Trump personifies the right-wing Republican revulsion of government, which is why he enjoys the unquestioning loyalty of his own party’s most extreme elements. Under his father’s tutelage, Trump came to see government as a cynical game that rewarded corruption. If government demanded to collect taxes owed, the Trump Organization found brazen ways to avoid paying. If government enforced an end to housing discrimination, the Trumps fought in court to preserve their racial preferences. And if government forbade the self-serving misuse of the Trump Foundation or the defrauding of Trump University enrollees, then the Trumps would look for a way around those rules, too.

The family that Cuomo grew up in regarded government as an instrument to improve society and, for those who served in office, a public trust. His late father, Mario Cuomo, who ran New York as governor for three terms, became one of the most eloquent advocates of Democratic Party principles. Mario’s rhetoric depicted the state as a family, with mutual support as its watchword and pragmatic progressivism as its guiding philosophy. The point of government was not to grab for oneself — as the Trumps did incessantly — but to achieve betterment for all.

It was a compelling vision, even if his own government sometimes fell short of those aspirations. And his decision not to seek the presidency disappointed an entire generation of admiring liberals.

While Andrew Cuomo too admired his father and reveres his memory, he has never enjoyed the same reputation for intellect and charm. From the time he ran his father’s early campaigns, he seemed to be little more than a tough kid from Queens, smart and effective but more ruthless and less compassionate than his father.

The kinder way to describe him in those days was “an operations guy,” less interested in liberal ideals or the fine points of Catholic social ethics than in getting the job done. Many people disliked him, especially if they got in his way.

Beneath the abrasive exterior, however, there was always something else that only those closest to him would glimpse. He has his father’s buoyant confidence and dry sense of humor — and a surprising capacity to comfort the grieving that emerges on private occasions. Those qualities make a difference now, at a frightening moment when the country needs reassurance so badly.

Andrew Cuomo is still an old-fashioned operations guy, which means that as governor, he insists on science, metrics, data and systems that work. In an era when the news cycle has been dominated by Trump’s lies, fabrications and illusions, Cuomo’s refusal to sugarcoat a dire reality is refreshing. So is his capacity to grapple with the details of governance, which have always been part of his life. These are the time-honored virtues of liberalism. And his service in federal and state positions has trained him for this hour in a way that is true of few other public officials.

We can only hope that his sane and sound approach to the crisis will prevail (and that he continues to succeed in mostly suppressing his true feelings about Trump). We can also hope that even at his age, with all his experience, he is still learning — not only about the world but about himself.

What he has showed us lately is a capacity to transcend his perceived limitations and display the decency, strength, humor and inspiration missing from our government. No matter what happens in this year’s election, a rebuilding America will need such leaders badly. If we still have a bigger and brighter future, then this Andrew Cuomo does, too.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.