The worst president. Ever.
By Washington Post historian Max Boot
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/05/worst-president-ever/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most
His one major competitor for that dubious distinction remains Buchanan, whose dithering helped lead us into the Civil War the deadliest conflict in U.S. history. Buchanan may still be the biggest loser. But there is good reason to think that the Civil War would have broken out no matter what. By contrast, there is nothing inevitable about the scale of the disaster we now confront.The situation is so dire, it is hard to wrap your mind around it. The Atlantic notes: During the Great Recession of 20072009, the economy suffered a net loss of approximately 9 million jobs. The pandemic recession has seen nearly 10 million unemployment claims in just two weeks. The New York Times estimates that the unemployment rate is now about 13 percent, the highest since the Great Depression ended 80 years ago.
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Government officials were delivering similar warnings directly to Trump. A team of Post reporters wrote on Saturday: The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan. 3. Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus the first of manyin the Presidents Daily Brief. But Trump wasnt listening.The Post article is the most thorough dissection of Trumps failure to prepare for the gathering storm. Trump was first briefed on the coronavirus by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Jan. 18. But, The Post writes, Azar told several associates that the president believed he was alarmist and Azar struggled to get Trumps attention to focus on the issue. When Trump was first asked publicly about the virus, on Jan. 22, he said, We have it totally under control. Its one person coming in from China.
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Trumps failure to focus, The Post notes, sowed significant public confusion and contradicted the urgent messages of public health experts. It also allowed bureaucratic snafus to go unaddressed including critical failures to roll out enough tests or to stockpile enough protective equipment and ventilators.
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Countries as diverse as Taiwan, Singapore, Canada, South Korea, Georgia and Germany have done far better and will suffer far less. South Korea and the United States discovered their first cases on the same day. South Korea now has 183 dead or 4 deaths per 1 million people. The U.S. death ratio (25 per 1 million) is six times worse and rising quickly.
dhill926
(16,339 posts)SunSeeker
(51,557 posts)And many of us won't survive to say it.