Finally, too embarrassing even for Trump

This covid pandemic has been a  humbling time for Trump, and this is not a person who abides any humbling. His braggadocio in February and early March was undone by those nasty little critters. He couldn't follow his instincts because they were leading to disaster, and his course changes showed his lack of leadership.

Then he started enjoying his daily show-off opportunities, otherwise known as the daily covid taskforce briefings. One of the first shows was horribly embarrassing, with Trump touting how intuitive he was about the medical issues, and his medical advisers looking very uncomfortable as they agreed. So Trump toned it down, introducing people, thanking them, complimenting his team, and generally trying to play the benevolent leader. (One major exception: when he was asked gotcha questions from reporters he dislikes. In those cases, he sharply attacked, but not at length.)

Who would have predicted that a moment at one of these briefings would finally tip the scales? It appears to have happended. Trump had just had a briefing on ways to disinfect surfaces. So he mused during the public portion of the briefing on some of his ideas and asked the medical experts to look into them:

So I asked Bill a question some of you are thinking of if you're into that world, which I find to be pretty interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said, that hasn't been checked but you're gonna test it. And then I said, supposing it brought the light inside the body, which you can either do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you're gonna test that too, sounds interesting. And I then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute, and is there a way you can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it'd be interesting to check that.

This isn't the first time Trump has injected his opinion into medical discussions as though it carried some weight. He made optimistic (and dubious) claims about how soon we'd have a vaccine and about chloroquine as a therapy.

Somehow, his blather on April 23 was too much, and brought a storm of ridicule down on him. His defenders among the laymen were many, but lame. He didn't really suggest injecting disinfectants... no, actually, a lot of treatments are injecting disinfectants... there's a company that announced intralung UV equipment so that's not crazy... chemo drugs are injected poisons, and people take them...  he was just free-associating as is his habit... come on, it was sarcasm, etc.

I can't point to exactly why Trump didn't get away with this one, but he didn't. He was subdued at the briefing on the next day, and over the weekend moped on Twitter that he wouldn't do them anymore:

What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately. They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!

So now Trump has lost his podium, and he'll be sidelined until he figures out some way to refocus attention on himself. I'm a little scared as to what that might be.

Bad--Could Be Worse

Sincerely, Trump is a very scary leader to have during a crisis. But so far he hasn't made any uniquely bad decisions that no other national leader has made in another country. He was very slow to see the danger, but so were many others. It's not a good excuse for a US president, but at least he didn't actively make things worse. Now, however, Trump could, through his anger or impulsiveness or lack of judgment, make a whopper of an error. He almost did that already with his statement that the country could open back up and churches be full on Easter. He backed away from that, but what if he doesn't next time?

His lack of seriousness throughout this crisis should be costing him support, but it hasn't necessarily been that way. Some people blindly follow him thinking he's a great leader and only liars disagree. I think a lot of people see him as a uneducated blowhard, though to some that isn't a disqualification if they generally like his policies. Maybe to those people he still seems a better choice than giving Dems more power. Sad to say, but I can understand that. I don't have much confidence in Democrats either. This pandemic is going to be hard on us to a certain extent since we missed the window of handling it with minimal damage. And chance is still not done with us--the virus could mutate into something even worse. The damage we do to ourselves with poor choices isn't too great yet, but there is still plenty of time for that to get worse too. Fun times!

Image: perezhilton.com