Coronavirus crisis highlights Trump's resistance to criticism, and his desire for fervent praise
President Trump has lambasted governors whom he views as insufficiently appreciative. He has denigrated — and even dismissed — inspectors general who dared to criticize him or his administration. And he has excoriated reporters who posed questions he did not like. The coronavirus pandemic has crystallized several long-standing undercurrents of the president’s governing ethos: a refusal to accept criticism, a seemingly insatiable need for praise — and an abiding mistrust of independent entities and individuals.
Those characteristics have had a pervasive effect on the administration’s handling of the crisis, from Trump’s suggestions that he might withhold aid from struggling state governments based on whether he is displeased with a governor to his repeated refusal to take responsibility for shortcomings in the laggard federal response.
On Monday, for instance, Trump was asked about a new report by Christi Grimm, the top official in the Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Inspector General, which found hospitals faced significant testing and medical supplies shortages. The president first demanded the inspector general’s name and when she was appointed.
Informed that Grimm was appointed to her current role in January but is a career bureaucrat who previously served in the Obama administration, Trump lashed out at ABC News’s Jonathan Karl, who had pressed him on the report’s damning findings. “You are a third-rate reporter and what you just said is a disgrace, okay?” Trump said, adding, “You will never make it.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/coronavirus-crisis-highlights-trump-s-resistance-to-criticism-and-his-desire-for-fervent-praise/ar-BB12lCjh?appwebview=true
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