GOP panics as Donald Trump circles the drain

| 1:30 pm EDT April 15, 2020
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As the coronavirus epidemic worsens and Donald Trump is proclaiming powers he doesn’t actually have, it’s forcing state governors to set up their own plans for re-opening the country. For a dire situation like this, the Republicans in Congress have a plan too. They certainly need one, after Trump’s denial of reality and delayed response have proven to be a disaster. Their response to the crisis is to blame China for everything and hope the average American gets the message somewhere down the line. There’s been a reason all along that we’ve seen buffoons like Sen. Tom Cotton insist on calling it the “China virus” – and right-wing pundits who have insisted on saying worse, which may be responsible for the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans.

Since March, polls have shown a double digit drop in support for how Donald Trump is handling the coronavirus, so Republicans like Rep. Jim Banks have decided that the real problem is Americans need someone else to blame for everything gone wrong. He said this, of course, on a podcast with notorious white supremacist Steve Bannon:

“Whether it’s the financial losses, unemployment, or small family-owned businesses that are losing everything that they have … They’re either going to blame the CCP [Communist Party of China] or they’re going to blame President Trump as the left wants them to blame … So, my encouragement to President Trump and his advisers is to go down every path that we can to draw attention to the CCP’s negligence, hold them accountable.”

Banks has basically admitted with this strategy that Trump has blown it. There’s no way left to sugarcoat it, and unless they do something about it, Trump going to take down the rest of the GOP with him in November, because they’ll be seen as equally complicit. It probably doesn’t help that Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham are already tryin to earmark the next stimulus bill to help their donors.