President Donald Trump’s use of the bully pulpit to defy his own government’s advice on face coverings has turned into the era’s latest ideologically motivated assault on science and civility. His noncompliance is a symbol of his refusal to adopt the customary codes of the presidency during a crisis and his habit of turning even a dire national moment to political advantage.
Both Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump face challenges to their legitimacy and political future from the pandemic and the two are equally eager to deflect responsibility for the crisis. The Chinese regime has mounted an aggressive campaign to promote the superiority of its system and assert global leadership, despite widely held doubts about the veracity of its claims… In Trump’s case, the urgency is even greater thanks to the presidential election campaign.
Trump remains the unpredictable force that he has been since he began running for the presidency. Trump’s presidency could be destroyed by the pandemic if it continues to rage and the economy remains stagnant or worse. But Trump has shown that he is the ultimate political survivor. Biden should beware.
Kissinger, now approaching his ninety-seventh birthday, no longer inspires such widespread loathing. As former critics crept toward the political center and rose to power themselves, passions cooled. Hillary Clinton, who, as a law student at Yale, vocally opposed Kissinger’s bombing of Cambodia, has described the “astute observations” he shared with her when she was Secretary of State, writing in an effusive review of his most recent book that “Kissinger is a friend.”
The United States once built an international order that all but assured its own primacy. Yet of late, it has changed jobs from that of chief architect and builder to chief arsonist. The new U.S. narrative is one of victimisation—at the hands of everybody, but especially the Chinese—and Washington seems to want to burn the whole edifice down.
That Trump—in the throes of the worst public health crisis in more than a century and the most devastating economic downturn since the Great Depression—is writing rosy history long before it has actually happened might seem audacious… But this is a page from a playbook Trump has used many times before.
The U.S. unemployment rate rocketed to 14.7% in April, a level last seen during the Great Depression, as 20.5 million jobs vanished in the worst monthly loss on record — stark evidence of how the coronavirus has brought the economy to its knees…And they rob President Donald Trump of the ability to point to a strong economy as he runs for reelection.
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U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials.
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Republicans are trying to pull off a high-wire act over the next three months: Reopen the economy enough to get most jobless Americans back to work and off the public dole, while resisting another giant stimulus package. If they fail, they’ll face a coronavirus cliff — an even deeper collapse in spending and sky-high unemployment in the months before Election Day. That could both damage President Donald Trump’s reelection prospects and put the party’s Senate majority at serious risk.
Photo/White House
Senior Republicans and President Donald Trump’s campaign are wrestling with how to best position him for November as the coronavirus poses a grave threat to his reelection. With Trump’s poll figures sagging in key battleground states six months out from the election, the Republican National Committee has launched a massive effort to reach some 20 million swing voters to make an affirmative case for his performance.
