Most people genuinely want to pull together and get through this coronavirus outbreak, stronger than before. However, there are disheartening exceptions.
In this category, put the selfish man who, knowing he had the virus, flew a JetBlue airplane from New York’s JFK to Palm Beach.
Hysteria is not helpful but the President’s critics are so overwrought that the mildest approbation of last night’s speech is too much. Watch CNN’s Don Lemon have a meltdown last night after former Ohio governor and Trump critic John Kasich said that Trump’s speech had been “fine.”
In response to President Trump’s address, New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait declared of the ban on accepting passengers from Europe:
Yet Trump seems to have absorbed the notion that Europe’s higher level of known cases means Europe is dirty and we are clean, and we can win by keeping Europeans away.
Trump neither said nor implied anything like that. What he said is that Europe has a higher level of infection than we have. That is not a value judgment. This is a fact.
Chait has every right to write a nasty column, but this is just a pathetic echo of the “racist” slurs after Trump’s initial ban on travelers from China, which bought time and likely saved American lives.
“Alarmingly” is the key word of the joint statement that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer put out after the address. They write:
Alarmingly, the president did not say how the administration will address the lack of coronavirus testing kits throughout the United States.
It might have been good to have a few sentences about the testing kits, delayed because of red tape that adversely affected the CDC’s ability to create and disseminate the tests.
As for constructive advice, Schumer and Pelosi do not want the crisis to go to waste. They urge passage of a coronavirus bill that is chock full of Democratic pet items.
Alas, the President seems never to have heard the old adage that, if your opponent is himself into a hole, don’t interrupt him. Shortly after calling for bipartisanship, President Trump tweeted about Pelosi and Schumer.
As for President’s remarks, Michael Goodwin of the New York Post has a more balanced take:
Big and bold, optimistic and compassionate. President Trump’s Oval Office address was exactly what America needed to hear
This is what it looks like when a president rises up to meet a crisis head-on.
With fear and panic spreading across the land and threatening to take down the economy, Trump is facing the greatest test of his presidency. Although battle-hardened by brutal fights with Democrats, the biased media and foreign adversaries, he is presented with problems of a different magnitude with the coronavirus.
It is a global menace that has declared war on America. Truth be told, sometimes in recent weeks, the president has appeared to be a reluctant commander-in-chief.
Thankfully, as of Wednesday night, that reluctance is history, replaced by a president who left no doubt that he is all in on the battle against this deadly scourge. Now effectively a wartime president, Trump’s repeated assurances of victory were music to the ears of a rattled nation.
Read Goodwin’s column.