Trump's chaotic coronavirus presidency: Historically divisive and, for some, fatal
It has been clear for weeks that the coronavirus was not going to turn President Donald Trump into a uniter. He started blaming Democrats and even former President Barack Obama for U.S. coronavirus problems a month ago. Then he called Washington Gov. Jay Inslee a “snake” for criticizing the federal response, and seemed to praise Nebraska, Idaho and Iowa (red and rural) for being “very lightly affected" — an implicit but illegitimate contrast to blue states with exploding caseloads, and no longer true anyway.
Now we're in the utterly explicit phase: Trump has insulted the Michigan governor (“Gretchen ‘Half’ Whitmer is way in over her head, she doesn’t have a clue”). He has told task force chief Mike Pence not to call Inslee or “the woman in Michigan,” and he has laid out exactly what is necessary for state and local officials to avoid punishment: “I want them to be appreciative.”
Trump has been president of the United States of Red America — the people who are "nice" to him — ever since taking office. He has never embraced or even seemed to buy the idea that he’s responsible for the entire nation and everyone in it.
When Trump tossed rolls of paper towels to Puerto Ricans reeling from Hurricane Maria and badly botched the recovery, we should have been thinking: First they came for Puerto Rico, and America did nothing. When he blamed California for its raging wildfires (wrongly attributing them to "terrible" forest management), we should have been thinking: Then they came for California, and America did nothing.
Trump is a historic outlier
Now we have a pandemic affecting the whole country. And suddenly, we need a president of all the states. We need a leader. We need, as Inslee told Trump last week, a star quarterback. And we don’t have one.
In fact we have a president who sees himself as a “backstop” to governors, says the federal government is not a “shipping clerk,” takes no responsibility "at all" for his administration’s failures, and signs a landmark bipartisan coronavirus rescue package without inviting Democrats to attend.
Historically, this is remarkable.
From George Washington to Barack Obama, presidents have rallied Americans to stand together in times of crisis. The example of George W. Bush is instructive: He lost the popular vote in a contested election yet became president anyway, to the eternal resentment and outrage of Democrats. Just a couple of weeks before the 9/11 attacks, The Washington Post dinged him for rhetoric about “heartland values” that implied cities like Washington were not religious, neighborly or willing to help people in need.
The terror attacks changed Bush’s language and, to some degree, American hearts. I spent most of 2001 shuttling between liberal Montclair, New Jersey, and conservative Franklin, Tennessee, for USA TODAY's “One Nation, Divided” series. The attacks did not change the towns’ very different views on abortion, guns, gay rights and the role of government. But as I wrote back then, they did highlight two shared, bedrock values: “love of a country that embraces communities as different as they are, and fury at anyone who threatens it.”
People in Franklin, watching the heroics of firefighters and the tragedies suffered by everyday people, softened their views of New Yorkers. People in Montclair, just 12 miles from Manhattan, were touched by patriotic flags, signs and stickers supporting New York in places like Vermont and, yes, Franklin.
Lives at risk: I don't want my parents dying of coronavirus to help the market and Trump's 2020 campaign
Unity is not an unusual American reaction to a national crisis. Has Trump misjudged his country?
We will find out for sure in November, but I think and hope the answer is yes. His rising approval ratings are the rallying 'round effect you would expect at a moment like this, a wish for America and its president to succeed in beating back a rampaging virus. But they aren't much of a rally compared with previous presidents.
Legally untouchable as long as he wins
There are dozens, maybe hundreds of reasons it is foolish to expect Trump to rise to this occasion, including his all-about-me obsession, his Twitter-trigger finger and his stunning callousness. From ending health insurance for his deceased brother's disabled grandson ("I was angry" because the family sued over Trump's father's will, he said) to his mockery of the late Sen. John McCain for having been captured and imprisoned during the Vietnam War, this is not news. We've known this forever.
What is new is that the most powerful person in the country is now legally vulnerable. The investigations, indictments and trials of the past few years strongly suggest Trump is at risk of being prosecuted. But as long as he’s the commander in chief, he can’t be.
He believes a roaring economy is his ticket to reelection, thus his talk about reopening businesses even as coronavirus ravages the country. This would not only spread more disease, cause more deaths and crash the hospital system, it would fuel more economic carnage. So it's a bald political calculation that wouldn't even work.
Protected president: Why Trump is increasingly desperate to avoid an impeachment conviction and win in 2020
There are a couple of ironies here. One is that all the inquiries, complaints, lawsuits and grand juries that many of us thought would rid us of this troublesome president have made him desperate to stay in office by any means necessary. The other is that Trump voters have gotten exactly what they wanted.
Experts are ignored, long gone or forced to kowtow to Trump. Science is on the back burner. The message from the top is consistently mixed and confused. Trump says the coronavirus will disappear like a miracle, then two weeks later declares it a national emergency. He downplays the need for more ventilators Thursday night and rudely demands them Friday morning. He says he may quarantine New York, New Jersey and parts of Connecticut, then says hours later it won't be necessary. He says he wants America open and churches packed by Easter, then says never mind, that was just an aspiration.
Trump supporters voted for a chaos presidency. That’s what we have. And it's going to kill some of us. It already has.
Jill Lawrence is the commentary editor of USA TODAY and author of "The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock." Follow her on Twitter: @JillDLawrence
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus chaos: Trump is a historic outlier dividing us amid crisis
