No one in public life has forgotten what the Democratic Party press did to President George W. Bush after Hurricane Katrina. It later came out that the government’s response to Katrina was both the largest and the fastest in world history, but the press so grotesquely misled Americans that it pretty much destroyed Bush’s second term. President Trump understands, no doubt, that the Democrats are waiting in the wings with their knives out, hoping that coronavirus turns into a disaster that impacts the 2020 election.
The Trump administration took prompt steps to protect the U.S. from coronavirus, and tonight, Trump and others conducted a press conference to announce various initiatives. There wasn’t actually a lot of news; the message was that the administration is on the case. Among other things, Trump announced that Vice President Mike Pence is heading up the administration’s coronavirus team.
You can watch the whole thing here, if you are a patient person. Around 23 minutes in, the president retakes the microphone for questions, mostly hostile and all from Democrats. He handled them well:
The stock market has obviously reacted strongly to coronavirus and its impact on the Chinese supply chain, as well as–President Trump points out–the apparent ascendancy of a socialist pretender to the presidency. But the virus itself doesn’t seem especially threatening. Time will tell, but fatality rates are low, and it is questionable whether coronavirus will exceed, in the U.S., the typical 30,000 to 60,000 annual deaths from flu.
Democrats hope that coronavirus will be a deus ex machina that will turn the White House over to them, as a result of a Black Death-like pandemic or an international economic collapse. I suppose those things could happen, but my guess is that the Democrats will be disappointed, and their hoped-for catastrophe will fizzle.
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