Donald Trump is completely off the rails

| 10:30 am EDT March 27, 2020
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How can you tell that Donald J. Trump is lying? If his lips are moving. That is an old line, but applies here. Each day, what we hear Trump say about this pandemic, COVID-19, is that he fixed a system that was broken. He repeatedly has given versions such as the following:

“We inherited an obsolete, broken system and when you hear the number of tests that we’ll be providing, and are now, it’s incredible,” the president says. “I’ve heard a lot of governors say the same thing. We took over an obsolete, broken testing system that wouldn’t have worked for even a small problem, let alone one of the biggest pandemics in history, and what [the members of the coronavirus task force] have done is incredible.”

Turns out, surprise, that is not true. First, we know he dismantled the pandemic team in early 2018, gloating about how he saved a few bucks and once again eliminated another thing his predecessor, President Barack Obama, had implemented. Second, Politico has reported on Thursday that Trump and the Department of Homeland Security, which is solely focused on immigration, had dismantled a pandemic modeling program the government had been using since 2005. The Politico pieced described the program:

“Some of the modeling unit’s analyses looked at what would happen if a large portion of the U.S. workforce — say, 40 percent — got sick or couldn’t show up at work to maintain and operate key aspects of the national infrastructure, such as the systems that keep planes flying safely. The reports were meant to guide policymakers toward areas that would demand their attention in the event of an outbreak.”

As we flail around, with new jobless claims reported at more than 3.2 million, a record number for a single week, and Trump claims he inherited “an obsolete, broken system” and nobody could have predicted this pandemic, as the nation approaches 70,000 confirmed cases, know that Trump had a new, working system in place to address pandemics and shut it down. The only thing that is obsolete and broken is a president who has no clue how to lead us in these difficult times.