The White Flag of Victory

UPDATE: I suppose in response to popular outcry, Trump now says the task force will continue indefinitely. That doesn't mean they'll be allowed to do anything, but it does require updating.

Donald Trump is good at some things. One of them involves declaring victory in the midst of disaster. Now the Trump administration is winding down its coronavirus task force.

The New York Times:

Despite growing evidence that the pandemic is still raging, administration officials said on Tuesday that they had made so much progress in bringing it under control that they planned to wind down the coronavirus task force in the coming weeks and focus the White House on restarting the economy.

This is what we call raising the white flag of victory. "It really is all a reflection of the tremendous progress we’ve made as a country," says Mike Pence. Uh-huh.

But none of the pieces fit. Take away New York and coronavirus cases are on the rise, but we're loosening the very policies that have kept the virus from going hog wild. We're losing something like 1700 people a day and a leaked Trump administration study expects that number to rise to 3000 by the end of the month. Among the dire predictions that emerged at the beginning of the crisis, Trump chose the lowest death estimate, about 60,000, and declared that losing 100,000 or so Americans would be a success. We'll be at that number by the end of the month, precisely when Trump aims to shut down.

I've seen people compare the dissolution of the task force to George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" fiasco during the Second Iraq War. They're not the same. Bush actually thought victory was in hand. The Trump administration knows we're in a world of hurt and insists upon denying it.

The misfit between giving up the fight and simultaneously declaring victory leads me to think Trump isn't fighting the virus at all. He never has been. Donald Trump never intended to govern the United States, only to exploit that nation for his own power and wealth.

That's a crazy thing to think. It troubles me to harbor the thought. But there are powerful reasons for drawing this conclusion.

First, we've never had any serious effort to resource the fight against the virus. On the contrary, Trump has insisted it's up to the states, who are then forced to fight one another for needed supplies, resulting in greater costs and fewer resources. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post have reported that Jared Kushner appointed "inexperienced volunteers" to procure supplies. Among other dysfunctions, the volunteers prioritized suggestions from "VIPs"--like Fox personalities--over the work of experts. The reporting is based on a whistleblower memo in addition to interviews with involved parties.

Second, we've got governors hiding their acquisitions of necessary supplies so that Trump won't "appropriate" them.

Third, Trump's own experts, like Anthony Fauci, say there's very little chance the virus came from a Chinese lab, but Trump and his cronies continue pushing the theory, wasting national intelligence sources in the effort.

Fourth, we've got Cabinet officials disregarding the task force's advice to stay home by recommending that people get up and start traveling again. What a great time to see the country!

Finally, Rick Bright, removed from his post as the nation's top vaccine expert, has filed a whistleblower complaint. Bright says, "I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit."

This is no serious way to fight a pandemic. It's not even the good ole college try. Trump never tries actually to govern, only to consolidate power. How else do we assess the nomination of a Director of National Intelligence who has no personal experience in the field and who follows multiple conspiracy theorist and QAnon accounts on Twitter? What kind of judgment does that reflect?

Author Jared Yates Sexton concludes,

Whistleblowers and stories have shown that Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner have not only wrangled life-saving supplies from states and bungled the response, but that the process was so rife with corruption and ineptness that it’s caused lives. Now, both are congratulating themselves for a job well done and continually saying the crisis is behind us.

It's time we admitted that Trump isn't trying to help anyone but himself.