Failed President

Samantha Hill

Writing for the New York Review of Book, Fintan O’Toole dissects Trump’s failed leadership. Faced with a real emergency, Trump has been unable to set aside his self-promoting narcissism to guide the American people. O’Toole highlights the extent to which Trump’s delimited worldview as a business leader has influenced his posturing in managing the pandemic, examining at elisions in his language and refusal to face reality.

Covid-19 presented Trump with a choice he would prefer not to make. Which Trump is he to be—the germaphobe or the bareback rider, the fastidious hand-washer or the all-male, all-American embodiment of freedom? Should he animate the paranoia that is his usual stock-in-trade and seize on this moment of genuine danger? Or should he appeal to the swaggering, risk-loving self-image of rugged male individualism so central to conservative ideology? Should he use his authority and influence to protect his own vulnerable voters by imposing speedy and drastic controls on movement and social life? Or should he appeal to the lumpen libertarianism of Fox News and the Republican donor base and tell those voters to live free and die? The profound confusion in Trump’s response resulted from his attempt to do both at the same time, simultaneously evoking fear and nonchalance.

Speaking from one side of his mouth, Trump has amplified alarmism. He fed conspiracy theories that the epidemic may in fact be much worse than it is. His language is classically paranoid: “The world is at war with a hidden enemy,” he tweeted on March 17. The pandemic is not merely analogous to war; this war is not a fair fight with a visible opponent. The enemy is secret, covert, clandestine. There are things about this virus—especially its origins in China—that “they” (the Chinese) are not telling us. On January 24 Trump thanked Chinese president Xi Jinping for his “transparency” on the virus. Yet two months later (ironically at a point when China probably was being more transparent) he decided that it suited his purposes better to raise fears of hidden horrors.