We are only beginning to suffer the consequences of Trump's failures
“Elections have consequences.”
Republican leaders were enraged when President Barack Obama reminded them of this after his 2008 victory. But President Trump has given new and macabre meaning to the phrase. For now, five months after we put our way of life in mothballs, we see how much ruin and unnecessary suffering has been caused by his election and his attempt at reelection.
Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, in an interview this week, said his former boss’s response to the novel coronavirus pandemic is a national security concern. “I think he’s failed,” Bolton told Public Radio International. “I think he, in the early days, did not want to hear anything critical of China, even though [National Security Council] staffers and the Centers for Disease Control staffers in early January were sounding the alarm, because he didn’t want to concede that the pandemic, as it turned out to be, could have a dramatically negative impact on the U.S. economy and therefore his ticket to reelection. I think we’ve all suffered the consequences as a result.”
Our suffering for Trump’s failures is just beginning. We have sacrificed half a year, $3 trillion of our treasure and 157,000 lives — and it has been squandered by one man’s incompetence. Not just incompetence, but incompetence in the misguided pursuit of his personal interests over the needs of the nation he leads.
He denied the threat, as Bolton noted, but he and his administration also botched the nation’s testing rollout, played down the disease, offered false assurances and bogus remedies, discouraged mask wearing, pushed the economy to reopen prematurely, concealed data, and disparaged testing. Now, he’s trying to force schools, and more industry, to reopen without adequate precautions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/07/we-are-only-beginning-suffer-consequences-trumps-failures/
