Donald Trump’s dawdling and inept response to the coronavirus pandemic has led to many a comparison to Nero fiddling while Rome burns.
This is an egregiously unfair comparison.
Trump has nary a musical bone in his body — as anyone who has heard him bleat the theme song to Green Acres with actress Megan Mullally at the 2006 Emmy Awards can heartily attest — so it would be much more appropriate to say that the president is tweeting while America burns, burns with a prolonged COVID-19 fever, coughs, chills, headaches, and various other symptoms of the coronavirus.
This morning Trump’s tweets and retweets were posted so fast and frequently that perhaps he could be described as the Paganini of Twitter, after the legendarily dexterous violin virtuoso who was noted for the incredible speed of his playing.
The president made dozens and dozens of posts over a five hour period, indicating that he’s added obsessive-compulsive disorder to his litany of psychological disorders, adding to the preexisting conditions of malignant narcissism, sociopathic misanthropy, and delusions of grandeur.
The overwhelming number of the retweets the president pounded out were not about the dire circumstances that the United States and the rest of the world now find ourselves in both medically and economically due to the COVID-19 pandemic but Trump relitigating the investigation of his campaign’s ties to Russia, a topic far from anyone else’s mind right now.
The tweets included accusations against a familiar cast of characters that anyone who has followed the saga of Trump’s battle with those tasked with uncovering his wrongdoing would recognize: former FBI Director James Comey, former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, controversial admitted-felon former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), his predecessor Barack Obama, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller, among others.
We’ll spare you the details of the right-wing media conspiracy theories that Trump was happily promulgating with his retweets of the dregs of the internet, but suffice it to say they all portray the current president as the victim of a vast “Deep State” conspiracy to bring him down, orchestrated by Obama.
Reading Trump’s Twitter feed this morning was like driving down a rural highway in a car with a broken radio that can only receive right-wing talk radio and has no off switch or volume control.
Trump’s continued obsession with the Russia investigation demonstrates how completely divorced from reality the president truly is.
If he thinks that the proven accusations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, which even the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee has confirmed, will play a major factor in shaping public opinion in his re-election bid, he has yet to learn that that ship has sailed long ago.
Trump is fighting a Twitter battle in last year’s war while abandoning the frontlines in the fight against the real crisis facing our nation: the plague of the deadly coronavirus.
It’s relatively easy to discern the president’s motives, even apart from simple ego-driven obsession.
Faced with the clear evidence of his massive failure to react quickly enough and properly coordinate a federal response again COVID-19 as the death toll in this country approaches 80,000, Trump is trying to change the conversation.
Among the multiplicity of retweets rehashing his past indignities, however, one Trump original tweet stands out from the rest.
So great to see our Country starting to open up again! https://t.co/ceXFk4iWBX
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2020
Yes, the president of the United States is using his social media posts to promote his own financial interests by announcing the reopening of his California golf course, in complete violation of federal ethics guidelines.
That post seemingly broke the spell that was keeping Trump fixated on his past grievances about the Russia investigations.
He managed one more tweet about “Fake Journalists” needing to return their “Pulitzer Prizes” — having finally learned that there is no “Noble” prize for news reporting — before patting himself on the back for the spectacular accomplishment of presiding over the deaths of 80,001 people as of Sunday morning.
When are the Fake Journalists, who received unwarranted Pulitzer Prizes for Russia, Russia, Russia, and the Impeachment Scam, going to turn in their tarnished awards so they can be given to the real journalists who got it right. I’ll give you the names, there are plenty of them!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2020
We are getting great marks for the handling of the CoronaVirus pandemic, especially the very early BAN of people from China, the infectious source, entering the USA. Compare that to the Obama/Sleepy Joe disaster known as H1N1 Swine Flu. Poor marks, bad polls – didn’t have a clue!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2020
Please alert the producers of Unsolved Mysteries as to who exactly is awarding those high marks to Trump for his handling of the “CoronaVirus” pandemic, other than himself.
Because if one does follow his directive to compare his response to COVID-19 to the Obama administration’s response to the H1N1 Swine Flu, comparing the number of deaths rather than using the president’s metrics of poll numbers and unattributed “marks,” it’s not a favorable comparison.
That’s six times worse performance and we’re nowhere close to this pandemic being over.
Still, after a brief intrusion of misleading spin about his performance in our current situation, Trump was soon back to tweeting about the Russia investigations and distracting his base from the real and important issues that are much more concerning for the future of America than the president’s grudges against truth-tellers.
Hopefully, by now, the majority of the American people see Trump’s spin and distractions for what they are and haven’t become so accustomed to the new reality of the mad king that they accept his behavior as normal.
He must be removed from office as soon as possible, whether because of collaboration with Russia, quid pro quo with Ukraine, or his massive pandemic management failures. If he is not removed from office in November, it will be impossible to Make America Normal Again.
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