Instead of admitting the threat coronavirus poses to our country and focusing on how to fight the outbreak, President Donald Trump and his White House care more about messaging. And that messaging is primarily blaming Democrats.

As the economy continues to be in free-fall after several days of major stock market losses due to fears that the deadly virus won’t be contained, Trump is more concerned about the election in November than he is about actually handling a potential pandemic.

Tens of thousands of cases of coronavirus are confirmed in China along with nearly 2,000 deaths, and now the United States is starting to report the first instances of community spread of the virus within our own borders. In fact, the total number of cases in the United States has nearly doubled to over 60 since Trump pulled his news conference stunt earlier this week.

Up to now, health officials had been doing a good job keeping the American people informed and warned about coronavirus. That is, until Trump appointed Vice President Mike Pence as his coronavirus czar and Pence proceeded to muzzle the experts in favor of propaganda.

Now that propaganda is being turned into talking points that will dominate the news cycle instead of the information we actually need.

The Daily Beast reports:

According to three sources who have independently discussed the crisis with him in the last three weeks, Trump has appeared preoccupied with his theory that liberals and the press were attempting to use coronavirus to make him “look bad” prior to the November election… The White House has encouraged members of the president’s coronavirus task force to denounce Democrats for attempting to politicize the crisis during media appearances this week.

Trump and his cronies have already begun blaming Democrats, accusing them of making the crisis seem worse than it is to tank the stock market all while insisting that Trump has contained the outbreak.

The Trump White House sent out a talking-points memo to its own media surrogates about how “while the President is leading aggressive response and preparation efforts, many in the media remain focused on attacking him at every turn… The Republican National Committee blasted out a message to surrogates and allies promoting a Fox clip of GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel declaring that Democrats are “politicizing this,” and accused them of wanting “porous borders.” Meanwhile, she said, Trump is “taking this by the horns like he always does. He’s going to make sure the American people are safe.”

Trump is clearly not doing enough to handle this outbreak and he knows it. That’s why he is panicking and hoping that telling lies enough will convince everyone that he’s doing his job when the reality is that he has weakened the public health infrastructure to the point that it is having trouble dealing with the crisis. After all, Trump dismantled the Pandemic Response Team and slashed funding for the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health. He even dismantled the system for dealing with outbreaks that former President Obama had put in place back in 2014 to handle the Ebola crisis.

Blaming Democrats is not handling the outbreak. It’s passing the buck and distracting from the real issues at hand. This is a national emergency, and you can bet that Trump is going to try to use it for his own political gain. Step one being blaming his opponents for his own incompetence.

 

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