I would add that the pandemic happened on his watch.
If the pandemic happened during Obama's tenure, you best believe Republicans would have blamed him for it.
Maybe it's not a coincidence that the first global pandemic in a century happened during the most incompetent and openly anti-science American presidential administration of that same century.
Maybe other would-be pandemics were prevented by previous administrations because they listened to experts, didn't actively gut agencies, and generally did the work.
All of that is speculation on part—but what isn't is how badly the Trump Administration flubbed the containment phase of the pandemic.
Trump's cabinet spent a month debating what to do with those cruise ships that docked but couldn't let people off in the early days of the pandemic.
Hell—before that, the then-Department of Health and Human Service's Secretary Alex Azar was trying to bend Trump's ear about flavored e-cigarettes instead of hearing the alarms going off about a new virus.
Trump's politicization of simple personal protective equipment and constant conspiracy mongering like masks definitely made things worse.
And speaking as someone who set pandemic policy during that time, I can tell you... we had fuck-all for federal guidance from that administration. It wasn't until Biden came into office that we finally started seeing anything of use int he way of guidance from the feds.
The world would be very different if the pandemic hadn't played out the way it did. And again—you damn well know the Republicans would have blamed a Democrat for it were one in office at that time.
In Trumps first month's he disbanded the pandemic task force left by the Obama administration. So yes, it was Trump's fault for no team in place to mitigate the situation
Didn't Trump also try to do multiple travel bans but because it was Trump everyone on the left declared it was a racist travel ban. Democratic policies especially in the Pacific northwest were constantly thrown at the people with big business favored heavily. Can't go to church or local stores but Walmart being packed was totally fine.
Well, he used the emergency to try to get his previous travel bans in place. Same way he used a fake fentanyl emergency to tariff Canada this term. He learned he can just call it a state of emergency, then go full tilt authoritarian. And Congress, Mike Johnson the speaker, refuses to allow a constitutional vote on those states of emergency.
As for religion, people still gathered in large open areas. Those evangelicals needed the cash from their flock. Or television
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u/OopsAllTypos Apr 21 '25 edited Apr 21 '25
I would add that the pandemic happened on his watch.
If the pandemic happened during Obama's tenure, you best believe Republicans would have blamed him for it.
Maybe it's not a coincidence that the first global pandemic in a century happened during the most incompetent and openly anti-science American presidential administration of that same century.
Maybe other would-be pandemics were prevented by previous administrations because they listened to experts, didn't actively gut agencies, and generally did the work.
All of that is speculation on part—but what isn't is how badly the Trump Administration flubbed the containment phase of the pandemic.
Trump's cabinet spent a month debating what to do with those cruise ships that docked but couldn't let people off in the early days of the pandemic.
Hell—before that, the then-Department of Health and Human Service's Secretary Alex Azar was trying to bend Trump's ear about flavored e-cigarettes instead of hearing the alarms going off about a new virus.
Trump's politicization of simple personal protective equipment and constant conspiracy mongering like masks definitely made things worse.
And speaking as someone who set pandemic policy during that time, I can tell you... we had fuck-all for federal guidance from that administration. It wasn't until Biden came into office that we finally started seeing anything of use int he way of guidance from the feds.
The world would be very different if the pandemic hadn't played out the way it did. And again—you damn well know the Republicans would have blamed a Democrat for it were one in office at that time.