The President seems worried that voters will ascribe his infection with COVID-19 to his own carelessness and stupidity. For this reason, he’d like to change the narrative. Rather than being heedless of medical and scientific advice, he was heroic in taking risks to meet with Gold Star families. On Thursday morning, he returned to this theme again in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on the Fox Business Channel.
“Sometimes, I’d be in groups of, for instance, Gold Star families. I met with Gold Star families. I didn’t want to cancel that,” he said. “But they all came in, and they all talk about their son and daughter and father. And, you know, they all came up to me, and they tell me a story.”
The president proceeded to recount some of those interactions.
He said the family members would approach him to “tell me a story about, ‘My son, sir, was in Iraq.’ Or, ‘He was in Afghanistan.’ And, ‘Sir, he did this, and he did that, and then he charged in order to save his friends.’ And, ‘Yes, sir, he was killed, but he saved his friends. He’s so brave, sir.’”
Trump explained that as he was being told these stories about fallen soldiers, “I can’t say, ‘Back up, stand 10 feet,’ you know? I just can’t do it.”
At one event, Trump claimed to have “went through, like 35 people” whose family members had died, “and everyone had a different story.”
“I can’t back up, Maria, and say, ‘Give me room. I want room. Give me 12 feet. Stay 12 feet away when you talk,’” he said.
Of course, the president doesn’t know when he contracted COVID-19. A staffer could be responsible, or someone at one of his rallies, or a guest at some other White House event. He chooses the Gold Star families because he thinks people will agree that it was hard to maintain a distance from them.
But it seems like he’s blaming the most sympathetic people, those who’ve lost loved ones in theaters of war, for giving him a potentially lethal disease. Since he’s doing this as pure conjecture, it comes off as immensely insensitive. It’s politically tone-deaf, to put it mildly. And it’s not a community he can afford to alienate after attacking one of their members during the 2016 campaign, calling those who serve “suckers” and “losers,” and refusing to do anything about Russia putting bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan.
Sometimes it feels like Trump has an uncanny feel for the American electorate. This is not one of those times.
His only real moment of political canniness was recognizing how easily exploitable white grievance was in this country, and how it could personally benefit him by allowing him to use the power of the Presidency to line his own pockets. Beyond that, he is simply a blind squirrel who occasionally finds an acorn, and attributes his luck to some sort of divine providence. He’s nothing more than a gangster who rises to the top and inevitably gets himself surrounded by a whole bunch of grifters who use their proximity to his power to enhance their own personal circumstances. And when he’s of no more use to them, they move on to the next grift.
ACCURATE!
He also used that Bartiromo call to suggest indictments for a few of his best friends like Joe, Hillary and Obama. You know maybe those e mails still got mileage. He discovered his base liked it back there in 2016 and why not do it again. Where is Comey when you need him? Can he get Barr to indict them before the election? That would really ignite his base.
Speaking of indictments, how does he always escape his misdeeds and bad news like the NYTimes blockbuster on his finances. Who does he owe $420 million to anyway?
Forbes has much more accurate estimates. His debt is around $1B, NOT $420M.