COVID Disrupted Trump’s Reelection
But if he had met the moment, he’d be cruising
In January, the biggest issue of the 2020 election didn’t exist. Coronavirus, the economic problems it created, and the government’s response to it will be on voters’ minds in November.
Donald Trump would prefer if it weren’t.
COVID-19 is the first thing Trump can’t BS his way through — first as president, and perhaps the first of his life. He’s tried, such as on February 26 when there were just 15 confirmed COVID cases in the United States and Trump claimed that “the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” Or on March 9, when Trump compared it to the “common flu” and said there was no reason to shut anything down.
But no matter how hard he tried, Trump couldn’t will it out of existence. It’s the first crisis of his presidency that’s not of his own making, and it has left him exposed (at least to everyone outside of what writer David Roth calls the Fox News Cinematic Universe). In that way, the pandemic resembles Chernobyl and the Soviet Union’s failing war in Afghanistan: the government and government-supporting media can insist it’s going well, but people know it’s not.
