Remember when Donald Trump fancied himself to be a “wartime president”?
This was back in March, when the virus was on the march. He said: “I look at it, I view it as, in a sense, a wartime president. I mean, that’s what we’re fighting…To this day, nobody has ever seen like it, what they were able to do during World War II. Now it’s our time. We must sacrifice together, because we are all in this together, and we will come through together. It’s the invisible enemy.”
We’ve known for a long time that the self-styled wartime commander has grown bored fighting the enemy, that he wishes it would just go away. A week ago, he said that Americans are weary of fighting: “People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots.” (The “idiots” are health experts.) Last Thursday, referring to Covid, he said “we’re learning to live with it” – which is basically what the French collaborators said about the invading Nazis. And Trump signaled his snowflake feelings yet again this past weekend, during one of his super-spreader rallies, by whining to his cultists: “That’s all I hear about now, turn on the TV, ‘Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid.'”
But now it’s official that the enemy was won. Because two Trump flunkies basically said so yesterday, waving the white flag of surrender on national TV.
Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told CNN: “We’re not going to control the pandemic.” Instead, we’ll have to wait for what he called “mitigations,” to treat the mounting casualties.
I’ll go out way out on a limb and suggest that if President Obama had presided over 225,000 deaths and 8,700,000 infections, and his chief of staff was throwing in the towel in TV, Republicans would be even more agitated than they were when he wore a tan suit.
Meanwhile, Mike Pence (insert joke here) is now virtually surrounded by the enemy, which has reportedly invaded the bodies of at last five members of his inner circle – including the “body man” whose job is to physically attend to Pence’s needs at perpetual close range. Presumably while Pence is also performing his duties as (here’s the joke) head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
Pence popped up on 60 Minutes last night, and when he was asked whether it’s safe for extended families to gather next month on Thanksgiving, here’s what he said in his most gelatinous manner: “Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I’m looking forward to it with our family. I think that’s a decision every American family can make…based on the vulnerability of particular family members…Seniors are at risk for the most serious outcomes…And so families might make a decision that certain elderly family members might take a pass.”
Translation: The enemy is winning so effectively that it’s not safe for multi-generation families to eat together; because our wartime fighters can’t control the enemy, grandparents can’t see their grandchildren.
But fear not, Trump’s deputy general is undeterred by the enemy invading virtually everyone close to him. He and his team are planning to march the campaign trail this week – and risk further spreading the enemy’s aerosols – as if nothing is amiss. As if he never got the news that last Friday marked a record-high number of new cases, and Saturday as well.
We can decide for ourselves, via the ballot, whether these surrender monkeys deserve another four years in power. But we certainly can’t say we weren’t warned. One year ago, on Oct. 25, 2019, this message appeared on Twitter: “We are not prepared for a pandemic…We need leadership that builds public trust, focuses on real threats, and mobilizes the world to stop outbreaks before they reach our shores.”
Thanks for the warning, Joe Biden.