This coward Trump
Let me be clear on this above all. When it comes to reducing the potential number of American deaths between now and November, I want Donald Trump and his administration to succeed. I will be even more generous than that. I would not criticise them for their coronavirus work if, between now and the general election, Trump and his people made a few understandable human mistakes along the way. That is, if in the course of working hundred hour weeks and mobilizing the largest concerted, nonpartisan endeavour in the history of federal effort, they occasionally made understandable and inevitable human errors, misjudged the optimal distribution of ventilators, say, or occasionally failed to reach their monthly quota in the creation and importation of N95 masks, say, I would look the other way and I would hope others and the news media would look the other way as well.
In this human crisis the thing that counts the most is deliberate and decisive and consistent and competent action, and it would be petty for any of us in the extreme to stand on the sidelines and gleefully look for errors. That’s not what we are about, that’s not what Nancy Pelosi and the best of us are about, and I hope that’s obvious to the objective observer by now.
But what I see instead is lazy cowardice. I see a president who spends the vast majority of his time in interviews crowing about what a wonderful job he’s doing. I see him constantly blame-shifting to a previous administration for his failures, an administration that has been out of power now for almost three years and four months. I see, now that I have become active on Twitter, a president who is constantly tweeting insults, put downs, belittlements and petty, inconsequential grievances and incessant self-congratulations, two, three, four times an hour for every waking hour. The American death toll is about to top 70,000 and what is Donald Trump doing? Bragging about his ratings.
We have an expression for what Donald Trump is here in Britain. It’s called “work-shy.” It is often applied to the royal family, as in, His Royal Work-shyness. It is used to condemn a Royal (or anyone for that matter) who spends most of his or her time enjoying the good life on the public dole while discharging a bare minimum of their public duties. It is a criticism often levelled at the disgusting child rapist, the Duke of York, “Prince” Andrew.
We have another expression for what Donald Trump is, and it means the same thing in Britain as it does in America. Donald Trump is a coward. He is a weakling, a namby-pamby little man, a yellow-belly, a wimp. He doesn’t have what it takes, not even a little, and he never will.
Donald Trump has put the notion of work-shyness as a direct result of cowardice into orbit. Privately he spends a lot of his time screaming at his staff because he’s frustrated. He wants to go back to conducting his Nuremberg-style rallies between rounds of golf. He wants to go back to the good old days, like the days immediately after he was ignominiously acquitted by a cowardly Senate in his impeachment trial, or the days immediately after the end of the Mueller investigation. He didn’t want the job of president in the first place, he ran so he could become a martyred symbol of anti-establishment corruption and to improve his brand. But ever since he lucked into the job with Russia’s and Bernie’s and Comey’s help, Trump discovered there are certain aspects of the job he enjoys. Trump wants to Make the Presidency Fun Again.
So he sees coronavirus as a personal inconvenience. The deaths of tens of thousands of Americans fills him not with compassion but with anger. They have inconvenienced him by keeping him from his golf game. Like a frustrated child he wants to wave a magic wand and make it all go away. He doesn’t understand why not even the president has that power, because he’s an immature little child, a fool, a corrupt nothing, a coward and a buffoon.
This is why we simply must have this child-raping murderer out of office. This is why America, for all her innovative greatness, cannot tolerate nor withstand nor endure nor survive another four years of Donald Trump. We must unite and be rid of him in November. No other cause on earth is as immediately important as that. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.