My son made a very important point today. If Trump had acted on Covid19 early,

[Arkansas Granny]

instead of denying it for weeks and doing nothing, he could have guaranteed his reelection. If he had acted in a timely fashion with shutdowns and testing, he could have been hailed a hero, regardless his unacceptable conduct and actions on other matters. Had he shown any compassion or empathy for those infected with this disease, his popularity would have soared.

He chose not to do the right thing, however. He lied and dragged his feet while Americans sickened and died in the thousands. This albatross should be tied around his neck for the rest of his life. He lost his chance to react in a responsible manner and he can't ever take that back

[Doodley]

1. Absolutely agree. However, Trump is a simpleton who truly believes he knows better than the experts.

He simply hasn't got the mental capacity to do anything without fucking it up, and he can't even fake empathy.

[AZ8theist]

51. EVERYTHING Doturd touches turns to shit....

A shame 130,000 (and counting) Americans had to find out the hard way....

[TheBlackAdder]

52. Yeah, but then he and his buddies wouldn't be able to game the Stock Market and position themselves

[Dream Girl]

2. I actually expected that once CV started. I thought to myself, shit he's going to leverage this

Crisis and soar right into a second term...Now, not so much.

[rgbecker]

3. It's like taking the red phone call at 3:00 AM and then immediately going back to bed.

Idiot.

[TexasTowelie]

13. Or he hung up and went straight to Twitter.

[Xipe Totec]

4. Basically, the premise is: If Trump wasn't Trump, he's be re-elected in a snap. nt

[live love laugh]

48. This 👆🏽nt

[Eliot Rosewater]

5. Yes, and like every single thing he has done he has failed miserably.

He has failed in ALL business pursuits to the point of owing Putin and his pals billions.

[SWBTATTReg]

6. Yes. Your son makes an excellent point. Instead of attacking the CV head on, like any ...

responsible person would have, he dug in, denied that anything was happening, basically shooting himself in the damn foot, etc., all ironically enough, to preserve his so called election (didn't want the stain of the CV on his record). By doing the little that he did, he will be remembered forever as the 'death' president.

[LiberalArkie]

23. That is the Putin approach. Remember Putin saying they did not have any gays in Russia.

[Ligyron]

28. Take that title away from Bush?

OK, it is Americans we're talking about here so that will register more with 40% of the country.

But the main thing is: 1st real, actual major emergency we have ... and Trump screws up.

[Hoyt]

7. I think, and hope, he would have lost anyway. But, he wasn't capable of doing the right

thing, and his ignorant white wing supporters wouldn’t have accepted it.

[regnaD kciN]

8. Remember how his popularity surged in the early days of the lockdowns...?

Americans have a tendency to "rally round our leader" in times of crisis. Of course, that was before his adoption of the "re-open no matter what" line.

The thing is, while he may well have won another four years by following common sense, aside from his own inherent tendency to minimize and avoid facing anything negative, he had also already surrounded himself with voices in keeping with his own background. And their steady drumbeat, as befits their status as "masters of the universe" with heavy investments in the stock market, was that we needed above all to stave off a depression -- so, human lives were merely collateral damage when it came to raising the DJIA.

[GopherGal]

47. A PR Problem

That's how he and his "circle" of jerks treated it. The pandemic (and WHO does, I think, deserve some criticism for their reluctance to declare it one) was a PR perception that had to be changed to save the stock market.
He had daily briefings to show how hard his administration was working on this. (ie to spout some lies designed to encourage the stock market)
15 cases, but very very soon it'll be going to zero.
We'll have a vaccine widely available by the end of the year.
MyPillowGuy will make masks for everybody.
Google's has 1700 engineers developing a website to help find testing
Hydroxychloroquine is the answer.
Like a miracle, it'll disappear.
Everybody will be back in the churches for Easter Sunday
It'll go away when the weather warms up.

He pissed his credibility (and his advantage) away with those desperate attempts to see a green up arrow on that ticker on CNBC.

[Hortensis]

9. Trump wasn't alone. GOP senators, Putin, Trump's

domestic ass-whisperers like Stephen Miller, all almost certainly, were encouraging him to not stop the pandemic. He's even repeated some fo the things they might have said, though I don't remember the one I really noted right now. Things like reassurances that it'd disappear on its own after taking out some old and disabled people sponging off tax dollars would probably be among them.

Let's also not forget how pathologically vicious and vengeful Trump is. America EARNED his fury from the very beginning. We didn't vote far more for him than Hillary and failed to show up at his inauguration. How often, cornered and terrified, did he call for popular uprisings to rescue him that never happened?

I believe he's been spiting us all along. It couldn't have been hard for any of them to convince a disordered man who didn't understand what was happening anyway to let killer disease sweep the nation.

[Initech]

10. Trump only cares about one thing and that's Trump.

And because of that, we may be suffering from this shit for a very long time. And most of this could have been prevented.

[Skittles]

11. your boy is correct

we all know Trump didn't invent coronavirus - it actually started as a crisis not of his own making.......but he MADE IT WORSE because he is so fucking incompetent

it's the same as in every day life - if you stay at a hotel and the toilet stops working, you don't hold that against them, you know, er, "shit happens". But if they FAIL TO FIX that toilet in a timely fashion, THAT is what would make you reconsider staying there again

[LiberalFighter]

12. Yep!

But Loser Trump has the trifecta plus.

Impeached
High unemployment
Pandemic deaths
Upcoming recession

Feel free to add more

[Mazeltov Cocktail]

15. Treason

Murder hornets
Dust demons
Cicadas 😆

[mtngirl47]

33. Plus a massive month long protest

And he did nothing to fix the problem, which he actually exacerbated.

[Generic Brad]

37. Treason

That is rapidly moving to the top of the list.

[DemoTex]

14. He will claim that he did that very thing.

In Trumplandia the lie is the coin of the realm.

[Cha]

16. Exactly.. I've been saying that for months.

but that never would have been trump.. he's his own worst enemy

[bucolic_frolic]

17. I don't think it would have guaranteed his reelection

Governors who have enacted lockdowns are popular in our eyes, and have the record of lower cases and a declining curve, but they are not popular with small business owners and will suffer further erosion to popularity as the second wave builds. We are not understanding in this country the success of the hard lockdowns in Europe or New Zealand.

The virus won't go away. I doubt we'll see a vaccine, except the one Trump imagines and announces in late October. Millions will die, and that's been clear since the first comparisons to the Spanish Flu of 1918.

[AlexSFCA]

18. had he done that, he wouldn't be trump

[JI7]

25. yup

[CanonRay]

19. There's no do over, no mulligan.

and his mistakes are going to be in people's faces well past November.

[Grokenstein]

20. But "doing something" reeks of effort.

So, ew, no. Besides, Vladimir wouldn't give him permission.

[Yavin4]

21. Trump cannot do what he's not capable of.

He's a dumbass who has no idea of how to govern. Even worse, his ego won't allow better qualified people to guide him.

[Ilsa]

22. I wonder how trump's religious charlatans are dealing with this?

God sent a plague that he(she) knew trump would ignore, causing him to lose. Jeffries, Graham, Falwell, and Paula White haven't made any brave declarations lately.

[lpbk2713]

24. Instead, he fired people who could have done something.

And then it was just one lie after another.

[littlemissmartypants]

26. Trump did exactly what a psychopath does.

He chose the route that would create the most pain and chaos. To him that is the right thing to do. Whatever causes the most harm.

I realize it's hard to think like a psychopath for a normal person, but we really need to face facts about his primary motivation. He's diabolical in his responses to everything, it's the content of his character.

He doesn't want to fix anything. Where's the fun in that?

He's absolutely compelled to cause the most severe harm possible. That's who our potus is and it's terrifying.

[colorado_ufo]

27. "He chose . . .

poorly." - The Grail Knight

[niyad]

30. I have even hearing that voice in my head since 11/9.

[SammyWinstonJack]

29. I still would NOT have voted for him. Doing his job for once and protecting the American people is

what is expected of him.. Anyway, tRump isn't about doing what's good and right. He's all about revenge, getting even, WHCD and Impeachment. Agreed though, it probably would have guaranteed his reelection and then back to destroying the country, business as usual with the Grifrer in Chief.

[paleotn]

31. Exactly!

You're son is spot on. Recognize the problem. Do some fluffy political speeches about how dangerous this is, and then step away and let the experts handle it. Whatever they need, whatever they want....they get. Full power of the US government behind them to smooth the way. Then we would be in the same shape as South Korea and Japan. Addressed the problem rationally and effectively. And he's be damn near unbeatable in Nov. Lucky for us he's a freaking moron. Not lucky for 120K+ Americans however.

Along that same line, I mentioned to my wife yesterday...imagine if Donnie or someone just as nefarious was a smart and savvy as Barrack Obama or JFK? We'd be living some version of The Handmaid's Tale right now. I thank my personal god every day that they're fence post stupid. That's the only thing between us and the abyss right now.

[Snake Plissken]

32. Numbnսts Trump was given an easy layup and instead he did a faceplant.

All he had to do was allow the experts to do their jobs and show a little sympathy to the victims like G. W. Bush did and he could have been a hero, instead , like the eternal dоuchebag that he is, he chose to make it all about himself and get in the way of the experts causing the situation to be far worse than it had to be ... to the point were we now have three times as many deaths as the next closest nation.

And it all started with Trump's unnecessary airport closure drama on Twitter that resulted in tens of thousands of infected people flooding our nation's cities from the international airports they landed in without being screened and continued on with him attacking any Governor who listened to medical experts that conflicted with his re-election prospects

[rainin]

34. He's not weak, he's not unfocused, he's not making errors

He is dismantling the US on purpose. Why? We may never know. He's commented many times how much money he makes during economic downturns. He bragged about getting rich during the housing crisis, so disaster capitalism might be his motivation.

It's also possible that he wants total control of the wealth like Putin, so breaking our democracy, destroying the government, and impoverishing the populace makes him King

I'll always suspect that Putin is playing a big role in the decisions tRump makes. Total US collapse is the goal. Full stop. And he's absolutely succeeding.

[dem4evah]

35. Smart kid AG...real smart kid

I said the same thing in early to mid April to my wife. I said "well, here's his chance, if he rallies Americans and oversees the CDC and NIH to stem the tide then people will rally around him despite what a garbage human he is." I actually thought he'd seize the opportunity and do it but as usual I completely overestimated his abilities. He's just an empty vessel folks, and a criminal. Vote him out, prosecute him if possible and lock him up.

[tirebiter]

36. It was commented on by some, myself included

that if Trump would have followed the blueprint left by Obama and Biden to contain the virus, keep it out of this country, he could have dealt with it without the complications that came as they did.
Another reason to get Biden in the driver’s seat ASAP.

[Woodwizard]

38. It's simple, he is an asshole

and a sociopath his behavior has been consistent for the 30 something years that I have been aware of the pustulant turd living in N.Y.

I really do not think there is some nefarious agenda he is a short sighted moron not equipped whatsoever for any long term problem. I always figured it we had a Cuban missile crisis or a 911 type event were were screwed and unfortunately it has been validated.

[GeorgeGist]

39. Narcissistic sociopathic racists ...

don't care.

[Evolve Dammit]

40. His abdication of any responsibility to Covid 19 is just the latest. It's what he has always done.

Total sociopath, emerging early enough in life to the point where his Mom wondered what kind of child she had raised. He is a very sick person with zero conscience.

[Xolodno]

41. This is why he's a bad businessman.

Any good CEO knows NOT TO let their ego get the best of them. So if their business plan starts falling apart, they stop, asses the situation and change their strategy. Then go before the board and tell them exactly why his/her first plan started to fail and what they are doing to change and fix the situation.

When one of Trump's businesses started going south, did he make changes? Nope. He hid the problems for long as he could then walked away. I'd bet a number of his ventures did stand a chance if they changed the strategy. But Trump would have to admit he made a mistake.

When he got caught with Ukraine, he never admitted he made a mistake. Instead doubled down that it was the "perfect call".

Same thing with the Mueller investigation, he knew Russia interfered...but called it fake news.

And of course, the virus. His plan was to cruise along with a roaring economy and hoping his numbers would be good enough to where he could blow off even debating. But when he was told the economy would grind to a halt, massive unemployment and infections. He thought again he could hide and out run this.

[xxqqqzme]

42. He could have been the

leader he pretends he is.

I thought it ironic he was so afraid of the numbers and tried to conceal them. He thought the accumulating numbers would make him un electable. He is right. Once the numbers were out in the open people were shocked, appalled and disgusted that he had done nothing.

[Mr.Bill]

50. Trump emerging as a leader once he got elected

would be like me waking up tomorrow and leading a symphony orchestra.

[NurseJackie]

43. Glass he's not a Trump advisor.

[NewEnglandAutumn]

44. Agree 100%

but his ego is too big he seemed think any hint of an epidemic was a plot against him personally so it denied.

[KPN]

45. All of which is true and just goes to show

his nature. A great observation on your son’s part.

[Baked Potato]

46. Definition of failed leadership.

[whopis01]

49. If he had done a half assed job he could have spun it

to get re-elected.

But doing the absolute minimal amount of the right thing is more work than doing nothing at all.

[cstanleytech]

53. Don't lay it all on the feet at Trump as enabler Republicans in varies places from Fox News to

the House and Senate are just as much at fault for this.