Desperate Trump gambles on turning pandemic shambles into patriotic politics
We should have known that the square peg would eventually be hammered into the round hole and so it proved when Donald Trump’s finally made the Coronavirus fit his nationalist agenda in his late-night tweet on Monday. “In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy,” the President wrote, “as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!”
So, there we have it: another indicator of where the next six months of American politics will lead us, with COVID-19 another immigrant climbing The Wall. He could have as easily said that Mexico or China or even Europe are “not sending us their best viruses” because, read literally, the tweet makes little or no sense. America is all but shut down but, even if it wasn’t, this tweet is a much broader proposal. Barring a very few exceptions – the much-cherished STEM PhDs, perhaps, or Slovakian underwear models – there will be no legal route to work in America because of… a virus?!
Although there’s no obvious link between the pandemic and the US jobs market, the tweet works in all kinds of symbolic ways. This is the patriotic meat of the Trump rallies, now thrown to those protestors screaming insults at the virus because God has given them guns and immunity. Another foreigner has entered the country and is now taking away your jobs. Hate them. Fear them. Just don’t expect to see them because this is the invisible enemy, just a hundred or so nanometres across…
It’s not subtle but it is effective within this limited context. Since Trump gave the presidential approval to the protests last week, they’ve grown in both size and number across about a dozen states. Some parts of America are now opening-up but the science behind it is not biological but political. The Jaws memes from Democrats and traditional conservatives have it about right when they replace the great Murray Hamilton with Trump, making him the Mayor of Amity Island. Yes, there still is a shark in the water but Trump fears becoming the failing mayor of his always-sunny town.
Where the memes have it wrong, however, is that there’s some subtlety to Trump’s tactics. To prolong the shark analogy: he’s been busy this past week throwing enough chum in the water to reduce the visibility. The MAGA hat-wearing protestors, the daily science briefings, the local politics mixing with the federal response (“the power of the president is total”), the usual squabbles with the media: it’s easy to lose track of the president’s role in all this. He will claim plausible deniability should it all go wrong.
He is meeting New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, who he’s feted in recent days after Cuomo said some generous words about the federal response. If that sounds confusingly consensual, it’s meant to be. Trump often speaks about the bipartisan approach to the virus, while condemning the other side for making it all partisan. He praises the slowness of the science yet uses the press conferences to bring in other authorities (usually from the military) to approve his rushed plans. Yet beneath all remains The Great Gamble, an overt economic argument that is masking the political argument.
The perverse part of this is that Trump could have a strong hand, even if he seems unable to play it well. Few American politicians would deny that China has been a problem in the world economy for as long as it has been a main player. Bernie Sanders has upset successive Democratic contests by making many of the same economic arguments as Trump. The free market arguments were reasonable up to the point where they came face to face with the reality of China’s regime. It isn’t a free market when one nation exchanges human freedoms for a competitive commercial advantage. Trump shouts about saving American jobs but the very same policies could have been made by a progressive Democrat shouting about saving Chinese lives.
Yet he seems incapable of engaging with the argument. His attack on the World Health Organisation was ill-considered and badly executed. There is a bold argument to be made here about science being a bridge between our freedoms and our safety, if only somebody could formulate it. There are arguments to be made about an economic future shaped by our new understanding of the world, including opportunities to reshape the workplace, our infrastructure, cities, and towns, thanks to the experiences we’ve gained by working from home. The failure of old supply lines brings a unique chance to create them anew.
Trump, however, sees only a binary game to be won every day leading up to November. It’s Trump/Biden, Red/Blue, America/The World. “If Joe Biden got in, they would own America between them, China and Japan, Mexico, Canada they would own America.” He said that just days ago. “You wouldn’t have a country left if he got in.” In this alternate reality, defeating Coronavirus becomes a patriotic duty towards this President. The administration is fighting to save America, but only by saving Trump first.
Yet, as polls continue to show, both red and blue America do not agree. The latest nationals give Biden a six or seven 7 point lead over Trump. Monday’s Rasmussen poll (usually the President’s favourite) suggests that 57% of Americans now believe the country is moving in the wrong direction (37% in the right direction).
For all the talk of Trump as the president who miraculously won against the odds in 2016, his life has been defined by the miscalculations he took on the way to losing billions in bad bets. Trump is gambling that there won’t be a second wave like he gambled in February that there wouldn’t be a first. His track record isn’t good and, by turning a scientific problem into a question of patriotism, he could be making his costliest mistake yet.