The Trump presidency looks like it is going down with Coronavirus

On Friday, last week, President Trump visited the Atlanta headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ostensibly one of the leading global institutions in this critical field.

Adam Rogers, a reporter for Wired, was there at the CDC and was so troubled by what he saw during an extended press conference that he filed an analysis of Trump’s bizarre performance. Rogers wrote: “As a reporter, in general I’m not supposed to say something like this, but: The president’s statements to the press were terrifying.”

I’m glad it wasn’t just me who thought so. I saw several of the extended clips and the event at the CDC had a psychedelic quality, made worse by his officials paying “Dear Leader” tributes to his genius. While Trump stood there nodding his head, attired in a partisan campaign baseball cap (Keep America Great) and those enormous expansa-pants chinos he wears when in dress down mode.

Many of us have become almost immune to the way Trump prattles on, spewing ridiculous rubbish about how great he is. Even some of his enemies acknowledge that amid the nonsense he has a skill for a certain kind of high intensity, low cunning communication. Beyond the boastful gibberish there is sometimes a whip-crack gag – like “because you’d be in jail”, said to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 debates.

Plus, his critics tend to over-react to everything he does, and deride his better decisions. Remember when his order in January to kill Iranian terrorist-mastermind Qasem Soleimani was going to start a  Third World War? Trump was right.

The appearance at the CDC was something else though. This was Trump at his absolute worst at the worst possible moment. At a time of extreme danger for public health and the global economy he looked like little more than a needy carnival huckster lost in his own little world.

Rogers – in the report in Wired – gave a good account of the science Trump got wrong. Falsehood was piled on falsehood. In essence, the President thinks this Coronavirus is just like the flu. It is not just like the flu. Doctors have flu vaccines and societies are used to mapping its spread and dealing with those outbreaks. This is new. We have no vaccine, yet, and the death rate might – might – be considerably higher than winter flu.

The key passage from Trump, the character “reveal” in the CDC press conference, came when Trump brought it back (as he always must) to himself, and thought this a suitable time to do one of his old routines. He invoked his genius uncle, implying that genius runs in the family. In grave circumstances, this was narcissism marinated in pathos.

“I like this stuff. You know my uncle was a great person. He was at MIT. He taught at MIT for, I think, like, a record number of years. He was a great supergenius, Dr. John Trump.”

The dialogue – as it often does with Trump when he’s free-wheeling – developed a Scorsese mob-movie cadence, as he mused on how he understands medicine, despite minutes earlier demonstrating that he does not.

“I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”

The early polling on Trump’s handling of the Coronavirus outbreak in the US suggests that many Americans are starting to agree that he should have done something instead of running for President.

A Quinnipiac University National Poll published on Monday evening should concern the White House. Faith in Trump’s abilities is sliding away. Some 49% of Americans already disapprove of his handling of the emergency whereas 43% approve. When asked who – Democrat frontrunner Joe Biden or Trump – would do a better job of handling the response to Coronavirus, Biden beats Trump 56-40. The research was carried out before Monday’s mayhem on the markets. Those floating voters who were prepared to put up with a lot of nonsense from Trump until now did so on the understanding that he presided over a booming market and growth. Take that away and he could be stuffed come November.

In recent weeks, Trump has produced a blizzard of contradictory claims – it’s just the flu, or the US is on top of this serious situation, which is nothing to worry about. And it’s all being hyped up by CNN and the “Fake News” media to drive down share prices and deny Trump re-election. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he sees everything through the prism of a booming stock market and what it means for his personal prospects. Notions of empathy, or shared national endeavour beyond party, or basic truth, even in an emergency this serious, seem not to figure at all.

The Trump administration has made some of the right calls – on closing down flights from China early on – yet those decisions are eclipsed by the domestic chaos on testing and a lack of national leadership.

Last night, Trump held another press conference, this time in Washington, to show that he is preparing to cut payroll taxes in a bid to help companies and workers. He said he was working with industries that will be hit. At least that amounts to an overdue recognition of reality about a crisis that just a few days ago he dismissed as exaggerated by the media out to annoy him. This latest press conference was a belated attempt to strike a different note.

The damage to his reputation may be done already, though, if the notion that he responded ineptly to a developing emergency becomes fixed and grows further in the minds of voters. And if that happens this will have been the week or so that did for the inglorious Trump presidency.

From time to time American elections do produce these amplifying, defining tests of a candidate – either an occupant of the White House or a challenger.

A great American, the patriot John McCain, was undone in 2008 by two poor judgment calls that suggested to the voters he was not suited to the presidency. During the height of the financial crisis in the autumn of that year McCain over-reacted and suspended his campaign, convening a bi-partisan meeting in Washington at which he offered no ideas on what to do about the financial crisis. Throughout, the eventual winner Obama was much more calm and assured. Combined with McCain’s earlier pick of the maverick Sarah Palin as his running mate, it made it look as though the Republican’s judgment was off.

In contrast, comeback grandpa Joe Biden is the person who seems to have best intuited what American voters might want if Trump has screwed this up and it then gets worse. I’m no Biden fan and it is hard to overlook the verbal slips and general tiredness of the Democratic party’s frontrunner. But at least the man looks more like a traditional and recognisable presidential figure.

On Monday, Biden had this to say calmly about Trump’s witterings on Coronavirus.

“I wish he would just be quiet. I really mean it. That’s an awful thing to say about a president. I wish he’d be quiet. Just let the experts speak and acknowledge whatever they suggest to him is what we should be doing.”

Hard to disagree with that.