Trump’s sudden silence betrays coronavirus failures
Something remarkable happened over the weekend in the United States: President Donald Trump was not seen or heard.
Since early March, Trump has appeared almost every day at the White House to brief the nation on his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Often stretching over two hours, the rambunctious affairs have shown Trump jousting with reporters, bragging about his administration’s response, hyping unproven treatments and attacking his Democratic rivals.
As the weeks went on, heath experts such as Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx received increasingly little airtime as Trump dominated the podium.
Then came the disastrous briefing on Thursday (Friday NZ time) when Trump mused about the possibility of injecting coronavirus patients with disinfectant or exposing them to high levels of ultra-violet rays.
It made Trump appear dangerously uninformed, and exposed him to global ridicule. Three days later, health experts and politicians still felt the need to remind Americans not to drink Clorox if they believe they have the virus.
It was one of the worst moments of Trump’s presidency – on par with his 2018 press conference in Helsinki when he appeared to side with Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies on the question of Russian election meddling.
A day after that press conference, Trump came up with the implausible explanation that the whole thing was a misunderstanding. Trump claimed he had meant to say there was no reason to believe Putin wasn’t behind the meddling when he said the exact opposite.
He tried to pull a similar trick this time around when he said that his disinfectant remarks were a ‘‘sarcastic’’ prank on the press – a transparent attempt at retro-fitting that few took seriously.
Trump cut the next day’s briefing off after just 22 minutes, refusing to take any questions. There was no briefing on Saturday or Sunday local time.
Instead of fronting up to the White House briefing room, Trump spent the day sulking on Twitter. He declared himself the ‘‘hardest working President in history’’, demanded journalists return their ‘‘Noble [sic] prizes’’ and accused Fox News of promoting Democratic Party talking points.
‘‘What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately,’’ Trump said on Twitter. ‘‘They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!’’
Trump’s sudden silence speaks volumes. He has conceded – in his actions, if not his words – that the lengthy daily briefings were doing him more harm than good.
In times of crisis, citizens usually rally behind their political leaders, giving them more leeway than usual to make mistakes and change their mind.
But Trump has not received the popularity boost from the pandemic that almost all elected officials have received – both in the US and abroad – despite his dominance of the daily news cycle.
After a modest initial bump, Trump’s approval ratings have fallen back to where they were before the outbreak began: the low 40 per cent range.
Compare that to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose approval ratings shot up from 44 per cent to 71 per cent in a month. That came despite the huge death toll in his state and questions about whether he was too slow to order non-essential businesses to close.
– Nine