After weeks of watching Donald Trump stand behind a podium and spew nothing but political propaganda and incoherent word salad, the American people likely didn’t expect to gain much on Thursday when the White House coronavirus task force held its latest briefing.
But what made this particular briefing different was that it was supposed to be a roll-out of the president’s plan to reopen the economy.
What the country got instead was a glorified PowerPoint presentation, the latest empty PR stunt from a president who is utterly incapable of managing this crisis.
As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes noted, “The Trump ‘plan’ to re-open the economy is similar to the Trump ‘plan’ to have drive-thru testing in every Wal Mart parking lot. It’s…not a plan. It’s just an announcement.”
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The Trump “plan” to re-open the economy is similar to the Trump “plan” to have drive-thru testing in every Wal Mart parking lot. It’s…not a plan. It’s just an announcement.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) April 16, 2020
The plan doesn’t address the testing shortage
The dead giveaway that Trump’s plan is an immediate flop is the fact that it doesn’t address the most important obstacle standing in the way of opening the economy: lack of coronavirus testing.
As former Ebola czar Ron Klain pointed out, the White House plan doesn’t even include a provision to ramp up testing.
“This isn’t a plan,” Klain said. “It’s barely a powerpoint.”
This isn’t a plan. It’s barely a powerpoint.
— No provision to ramp up testing
— No standard on levels of disease before opening (“down” is a direction, not a level)
— No protections for workers OR customers pic.twitter.com/bE3GCYeECw— Ronald Klain (@RonaldKlain) April 16, 2020
Experts have repeatedly said that Trump should not push to reopen the economy without drastically upping coronavirus testing capacity.
According to The New York Times, “As President Trump pushes to reopen the economy, most of the country is not conducting nearly enough testing to track the path and penetration of the coronavirus in a way that would allow Americans to safely return to work, public health officials and political leaders say.”
Despite all that, Trump tried to make the case on Thursday that less testing is a good thing.
Trump makes a convoluted case that less coronavirus testing in laboratories is actually a good thing pic.twitter.com/fAF8CPOBko
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 16, 2020
Without widespread testing in place, telling the American people to resume their pre-COVID lives would be a public health disaster, no matter how many slides are in the president’s PowerPoint presentation.
What Donald Trump offered today wasn’t a plan. It was another empty political PR stunt from a man who doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing.
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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.
