Donny on the spot?
“The Coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”
– Rush Limbaugh, February 24, 2020, on his radio show聽
The coronavirus is on the march.
President Trump says he’s going to meet it head-on.
He’s armed with a bundle of falsehoods about the confirmed killer of nearly three thousand people worldwide.
There’s nothing new about that.
You may have forgotten his toilet paper-tossing antics in Puerto Rico back in October of 2017 after he’d been cajoled into treating Puerto Ricans as the Americans they truly are. His arrival had been late, and, by many observers, insufficient.
He held a news conference in which he proclaimed there had only been between six and 18 deaths. (According to a Harvard University study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the eventual death toll has been closer to 4,600 people).
Later that month, he sat in the Oval Office, and he told reporters he gave himself a score of “10” out of 10 for his handling of the relief effort.
He simply couldn’t remove himself from the center stage long enough to show the least bit of empathy for those suffering Americans. So, whenever there’s a serious crisis, you really don’t expect him to have a good grasp of the seriousness of a potential worldwide disaster.
Hurricanes, massive floods or major brush fires affect parts of countries every year.
But a new and deadly disease which has already affected upwards to 90,000 people across the globe — requires leaders who take matters seriously.
President Trump appears to be more concerned about how his poll numbers will be affected.
He’s full of praise (for himself) about the economy, and the ever-rising stock market.
But the coronavirus has contributed to stalls in worldwide supply chains, serious drops in airline travel around the world and fears that it could even cause a major worldwide recession.
The results of which led to severe drops in the Dow Jones Industrial Average of nearly 2,000 points last Monday and Tuesday.
But when Trump stood before the nation, and while everybody hoped he’d at least try to look and sound presidential, he attacked Democrats.
According to him, it was the fault of Democrats at a debate the night before, that caused the DOW to take a plunge.
“I think they take a look at the people that you watched debating last night and they say there’s even a possibility that can happen, I think it really takes a hit because of that. And it certainly took a hit because of this,” he announced.
It’s striking how convincing he tried to seem while pulling that out of thin air.
Especially since the two largest drops in the DOW (of 1,031.61 points last Monday and 879.44 points last Tuesday) actually took place hours before that debate.
After spinning that yarn, it seems he felt free to spin more.
He told reporters that a vaccine could be created to prevent the disease in a “fairly quick manner.”
Problem is, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases stood at the same podium and said that it could take at least a year or even 18 months for a vaccine to be developed and deployed.
Trump also said there are only 15 cases of coronavirus in the United States.
There are 60.
Trump seems to take his cues for his information, not from medical scientists, but from folks like his radio-buddy Rush Limbaugh.
Limbaugh has said on his radio show that he believes that the “Chinese communists” have created coronavirus “as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump.”
Preposterous.
He’s also gone on a tirade that seems to prove that Trump is listening — and following his lead.
“The Democrat (Democratic) Party, as it’s currently constituted, poses a much greater threat to this country than the coronavirus does,” he told his listeners on the morning of the day Trump essentially said at the podium that night.
The coronavirus is a serious business.
It requires serious people to head it off.
Not Limbaugh.
And certainly not Trump.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.