As the coronavirus outbreak continues to wreak havoc all over the globe, one thing has become abundantly clear: Donald Trump and his cult of GOP lawmakers in Washington are too blind to govern in a time of crisis.
In the not-so-distant past, a global pandemic would have quickly unified leaders on both sides of the aisle, but this MAGA-infected Republican Party will have none of it. They refuse to leave their political sandboxes and act like rational adults.
That’s, of course, because the GOP continues to take its cues from the most dangerous and incompetent president in history.
Since the beginning of this fiasco, Trump has been downplaying the outbreak, even calling it a hoax. By believing him, as his red hat-wearing supporters always do, they are putting the rest of the country at risk.
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Trump has also dedicated his precious time to attacking the media and blaming Democrats, because he instinctively believes anything that hurts the stock market – and thus, his reelection effort – must be a plot to overthrow him.
Not for a moment can he fathom that his response to this crisis – right up to his dumpster fire Oval Office address on Wednesday night – has been an unmitigated horror show.
But, again, this is not only a Trump problem. This is a complete system failure on the part of the Republican Party.
As former Obama official Tommy Vietor said, “Republicans are actively harming our response” to this global crisis by blindly following Trump as he takes this country off a cliff.
Democratic lawmakers on Thursday proposed a coronavirus relief package that includes free testing, paid medical leave, food assistance and more. GOP leadership should have jumped on this opportunity to take action, but they announced their opposition right away.
There is the possibility that Congress and the White House will soon reach some type of deal on a coronavirus relief package, but it’s appalling that they had to be dragged into it kicking and screaming.
Meanwhile, the number of nationwide cases continues to rise and the U.S. testing capacity is still dangerously far behind where it should be. Not to mention the fact that the stock market is spiraling out of control and the odds of a recession seem to grow each day.
Some top economists claim the United States is already in a recession.
This global health crisis shows us how unfit Donald Trump is
Donald Trump isn’t fit to be president of the United States even in the best of times, but this global health emergency has shown all of us just how dangerous he can be when an actual crisis hits his desk.
It’s hard to tell whether the presidency is too big for him or if he’s just too small for it, but it is clear that he shouldn’t be anywhere near a position of power at any level of American government.
And the Republican Party, paralyzed by cowardice and blind partisanship, would rather whistle past the graveyard than responsibly deal with this emergency as quickly as possible.
At the end of the day, the GOP knows that if they sound the alarm now, it would be an acknowledgement that their dear leader has completely bungled this – and, boy, they couldn’t do that.
So the American people are forced to wait out this crisis as Donald Trump – the chaos president – and his cult-like mob of sycophants in Congress try to convince us that this is all fine, nothing to see here, Trump is doing A-plus work.
The least any of them could do is let the adults handle things for the next eight months until voters can send them back to where they belong.
Lives depend on it.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
