First, I just have to say: Kamala Harris: 🎉🥳🍾
Schooley asked this very reasonable question:
Seems so simple, right? Trump could just do the right thing, become a hero, and improve his election chances.
But he can’t.
- It isn’t as simple as calling for a shutdown: people without resources would need support, we’d need testing and PPE, so pulling this together requires a degree of competence.
- Trump doesn’t know how to actually manage anything.
- Nobody around Trump knows how to manage anything (look at Kushner)
- He has dismantled (and never assembled) the parts of government capable of dealing with a pandemic.
- If Trump acted now, it would be tantamount to admitting he should have done something earlier. People will say, “If you did this earlier, tens of thousands of lives could have been saved.” He’ll never do anything other than dig in.
- The GOP wouldn’t back him up because using government to help people goes against their philosophy of government. (For what I mean by that, see this post.
- His supporters would resist because masks have been politicized as “weak.”
- The lie machine (right-wing media) can’t rewind.
- Fox wouldn’t back him up because it would require pulling together with Democrats for a common cause, and without Democrats as their “enemy” Fox has no purpose.
- He genuinely doesn’t care if people die.
- He truly believes he’s doing a good job and the press is being unfair to him, and the real problem with how it’s being reported (he actually thought his face should go on Mount Rushmore!)
- He doesn’t actually know how to be a leader. He only knows how to Tweet slogans.
- All he has ever done is pretend to be a success. It’s all he knows how to do. He can’t change now.
