Public service announcement Number 6 on what Fox viewers are missing as we finally answer the question: How will our reality-TV president handle his first major crisis?
Despite Trump vassals like Sean Hannity equating the coronavirus with the flu, this one has no vaccine yet, there is no equivalent of Theraflu, test kits are in scandalously short supply, and it just killed nearly 400 people in Italy in one day.
At that recent Rose Garden press conference, Trump shook hands casually.
Social distancing? That ban he announced on travel from Europe had Americans panic-buying tickets home. But it turned out the ban didn’t apply to Americans, so now our fellow citizens have been jammed into international arrival terminals, waiting hours to get cleared.
Late last year, according to Politico, customs officials told Congress that they were short 2,700 officers, in part because Trump reassigned so many to the Mexican border. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the mess “solely the responsibility of the federal government for not listening.”
Writes columnist Maureen Dowd (she was tough on Obama, too) of Trump: “He can’t cover up his lack of empathy, his instinct to mislead, his refusal to do his homework and his blame-shifting. . . He can’t cover up the fact that he is not interested in public policy fixes or ending his juvenile sniping across the aisle.”
The administration is working on relaxing nursing home regulations, including rules to curb deadly infections. Meanwhile, the virus has killed 13 residents at a home in Washington state.
Dave Griffiths, Mechanic Falls
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