The Atlantic Daily : Trump is making things worse

[Celerity]

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MARCH 12, 2020

Caroline Mimbs Nyce
Senior associate editor

A lot has happened in the past 24 hours. (My colleague joked that yesterday “was a long year.”) Today, we’ll focus on how the Trump administration is handling this outbreak. We’ve also got a new guide to “social distancing.”



Last night, President Donald Trump addressed the nation. It didn’t go very well. As he spoke, financial futures began crashing, perhaps reflecting a lack of confidence in the executive branch’s response plan.

David Frum, a staff writer and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, wrote a scathing review of the president’s address, calling it “the worst action yet in a string of bad actions.” “This crisis is not of Trump’s making,” he writes. “What he is responsible for is his failure to respond promptly.”

Some additional reading on the Trump administration’s handling of this outbreak: Americans are looking to the president for answers. They aren’t getting them, Juliette Kayyem, a former Department of Homeland Security official, argues. The misinformation coming from the White House is being amplified by a propaganda machine. And it’s dangerously effective.

Some conservative figures are intentionally misnaming the virus—to make a point. There’s a reason why Trump calls it a “foreign virus,” the contributing writer Ben Zimmer argues. The European travel ban just doesn’t make sense. The U.K. is presently exempted. But what happens, our London-based staff writer Tom McTague asks, when things there get as bad as in Italy or France?

Tip of the day: Here’s what you should—and shouldn’t—do during a period of “social distancing.”

[lpbk2713]

1. That's the one thing he's good at.

Making things worse.