Trump doesn’t want us to know what went wrong
In the Broadway classic “Guys and Dolls,” a gangster named Big Julie From Chicago informs participants in a crap game that they will be using dice specially made for him — with “invisible” spots. “These dice ain’t got no spots on them,” protests Nathan Detroit, the game’s organizer. “They’re blank.” But Big Julie, a practiced cheater as well as a thug, is ready. “I had the spots removed for luck,” he replies. “But I remember where the spots formerly were. Do you doubt my memory?” “Big Julie,” says Nathan with resignation, “I have great trust in you.”
Donald Trump channeled Big Julie From Chicago during his White House spin classes last week, not for the first time, insisting that he hadn’t said things the entire world heard him say and insulting reporters with the nerve to quote Trump back to Trump. “Don’t be a cutiepie,” snarled the leader of the free world at one reporter who asked him about the thousands of Americans dying each week. But he was particularly incensed at proposals that the country actually try to learn what the federal government knew about the pandemic, when we knew it, what we did about it and what we are doing.
One proposal circulating in Congress would create a National Commission on the COVID-19 Pandemic, “not just to look back at prior practices and mistakes but to learn lessons as quickly as possible to better protect the United States going forward.” The bipartisan body would consist of five Republicans and five Democrats. To ensure that it did not interfere with our response or become a tool in the presidential election, its members would not even be appointed until after the next president is inaugurated. Its chair would be appointed by that president, which presumably means were Trump reelected, that would be Jared Kushner.
The Commission’s purpose would be to get the facts, which in times past was generally regarded as a good thing. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor,
President Franklin Roosevelt appointed a commission to investigate why we were so unprepared for it. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush approved a commission to investigate. Both presidents, one a Democrat and one a Republican, knew that these inquiries might well embarrass them. But both possessed the character and the maturity to know that finding out the truth was critical to the welfare of the country they were elected to serve.
This president, however, is in what may charitably be called a league of his own, and he blasted the suggestion that we learn what happened with the COVID-19, deploying his customary rubbish. “It’s witch hunt after witch hunt,” sniped Trump, belittling the idea of finding out the truth. “Everyone knows it’s ridiculous.” If the president has been honest with the American public, an inquiry shouldn’t concern him.
“Throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” he tweeted in 2018. Let’s call that debatable on both counts.
But if so, the president should welcome the investigation. He and his fellow geniuses will be free to blame the disastrous federal response to warnings about the pandemic and then to the pandemic itself on anyone they want: on the states, for foolishly supposing that the United States government would confront a global health catastrophe. On the impeachment proceedings, which the president claims distracted him. On the Obama Administration, which hadn’t been in office for over three years when the pandemic struck and which warned Trump’s team about this in early 2017. Or on UFOs, if they choose. The idea is to have adults, with expertise, integrity and the good of the nation in mind, separating facts from falsehoods.
The president is unenthusiastic, and one may reasonably infer why. But we are in extremely tough shape, and this is no time for crap games or hiding spots. Jeff Robbins, a former assistant U.S. attorney and U.S. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.