Ezra Klein: The president's job is to manage risk. But Trump is the risk.

[babylonsister]

The president’s job is to manage risk. But Trump is the risk.
Trump was a gamble. It’s not paying off.
By Ezra Klein@ezraklein May 18, 2020, 7:00am EDT
Illustrations by Chris Malbon for Vox; additional reporting by Roge Karma


A few months ago, I had dinner with a friend who argued that it was time to rethink Donald Trump’s presidency. After all, the economy was fine, we hadn’t ended up in a nuclear war, and the tough posture toward China was paying some trade dividends. Maybe the madman routine was working. Maybe it really was just a routine, and Trump was managing the presidency well enough. Wasn’t it time for critics like me to rethink their most dire warnings? Wasn’t it time to admit we’d gotten him wrong?

There were, even then, obvious rebuttals, and I made some of them. The lethal mismanagement of the Hurricane Maria response, for instance. But there was a power to the argument. The worst hadn’t happened. Didn’t that require a reckoning?

And then the novel coronavirus came, and President Trump did nothing for week after week, month after month. We sit, still, in the void where a plan should be, forced to choose between endless lockdown and reckless reopening because the federal government has not charted a middle path. Instead, we wake to presidential tweets demanding the “liberation” of states, and laugh to keep from crying when the most powerful man in the world suggests we study the injection of disinfectants. Trump has let disaster metastasize into calamity. The feared collision of global crisis and presidential recklessness has come, and it is not close to over.

snip//

Of the many risks that Trump amplified through lack of preparation, reckless policymaking, or simple inattention, a pandemic is the one that came due while he was still president. But it is not the only one lurking, nor is somehow a charm against other disasters befalling us. Moreover, the coronavirus itself raises the risk of geopolitical crises, of financial crises, of disasters both expected and unexpected, manifesting.

Trump, in his daily rhetoric and erratic mismanagement, is placing big, dangerous bets, but he will not cover the losses if they go wrong: It’s America, and perhaps the world, that will pay, in both lives and money.


more...

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/18/21251370/donald-trump-risk-coronavirus-2020-reelection-nuclear-china

[dalton99a]

1. The president's job is to help/protect Americans, not to insult/impoverish/rob/sicken/murder them

which is what he does on a daily basis

[crickets]

2. Excellent piece. Frightening, depressing, but well thought out and well worth the read. nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Calling Trump a "gamble" is too generous. The only people with an upside from Trump

were racists and extremely rich people. Even if the pandemic hadn't happened, the majority of Americans would be appreciably worse off with Trump than without. The protesters who want things reopened are the racists who voted for him, who are trying to persuade themselves they didn't screw themselves with the vote that was risky for them. For most, Trump was a lose/lose proposition.