Chaotic disaster
It turns out Obama has not been hugely impressed with Trump’s recent work. He
delivered a blistering critique of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus crisis, describing it as “an absolute chaotic disaster” during a private call Friday night with people who worked for him in the White House and across his administration.
…
In a 30-minute conversation with members of the Obama Alumni Association, the former president said the response to the coronavirus outbreak served as a critical reminder for why strong government leadership is needed during a global crisis. The call was intended to encourage former Obama staffers to become more engaged in Biden’s presidential campaign.
“This election that’s coming up — on every level — is so important because what we’re going to be battling is not just a particular individual or a political party,” Obama said. “What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life.”
Yes, but it is the Trump Republicans who are enabling and cheering on the trends. It is Trump who exemplifies them so thoroughly.
He also talked about the Flynn disgrace.
Weighing in on the case during the call, Obama said Attorney General William Barr’s decision to drop the criminal case against Flynn suggested “the rule of law was at risk” in the United States. Before taking office, Obama warned Trump about Flynn and raised questions about his conduct with Russia.
But Obama saved his strongest words for the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus crisis and its worldview.
“It’s part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic and spotty,” Obama said. “It would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ — when that mindset is operationalized in our government.”
To hell with everybody else – “to heck with” is not an idiom.
Anyway, here’s hoping Trump is running around with his pants on his head screaming.
And not just his pants on his head, but his pants on fire.
If Obama had been President during this crisis, I imagine there would have been a load more armed demonstrators out protesting about the lockdown.
It might be because I’m a foreigner, but I don’t see how that necessarily follows. Obama would have read his daily briefings, in their entirety; which would have been the original kind, with great detail about the coronavirus outbreak from the US staff in the WHO and the excellent experts in the relevant agencies. He would have been on top of the the outbreak from the start, spreading the information nationwide and ensuring that all of the states and territories were fully informed and gearing up to cope. You would have co-operated with the WHO in getting testing kits distributed widely before there was a case in the US. You would have had an intelligent plan from December onwards to slow the economy and ensure as many people as possible could continue to work in some capacity from home should the pandemic break out in the US, instead of xenophobic rantings in March from an idiot who hadn’t read the reports and had sacked the experts and destroyed the agencies which could have dealt with the situation. People would have had time for preparation, and would have been given all the information, excellent reasons for, and understanding of, the measures necessary to save lives instead of being encouraged to believe that the virus is a commie plot by a nutcase who is determined to blame everyone else for his inadequacy. Those armed morons have been incited to their appalling behaviour, and they shouldn’t have been.
And you wouldn’t be facing the worst pandemic on the planet so far, with a quarter of global deaths in a country which has a mere 4.25% of the world’s population.
And now I discover more blog posts this morning which spell out the comment which had been simmering in my brain overnight.
I’ve been having trouble with forward links not appearing at the top of the page of the most recent post until hours after there are new posts. Perhaps I should go to the overview page when I think that I have read the last entry, instead of merely refreshing.
Tigger @3, I agree. Of course, then the impact of Cov19 on the US would be much less than currently and so many would accuse Obama of a complete overreaction to a damp squib. Shades of Y2K or SARS. There’s no thanks for avoiding complex and difficult to perceive problems through difficult and inconvenient seemingly unrelated actions. In other words, life is more complex than most of us comprehend outside our specialities.
As someone watching from the inside, I have to disagree with Tigger and Rob. There may have been fewer deaths, fewer cases, but there would have been more protests. To get there, we would still have needed federal government action, and that alone would have been enough to throw the red states into a tizzy. Plus, the very word “Obama”. It would have become the “Obama virus” to most of those people, and the slightest thing, like getting testing or wearing masks in public, would have been seen as horribly invasive.
The Obama hatred is strong in these people.