Coronavirus

Donald Trump declared a national emergency on Friday over the spread of COVID-19, promising to dedicate $50 billion in funding for states to fight the virus. The order is the latest in a line of actions taken by the administration to try to stem the spread of the virus: major restrictions on travel from China and the European Union, convincing insurance companies to waive copayments on Coronavirus testing, and loosening FDA restrictions on testing, among others. 'We will overcome the threat of the virus,' President Trump said during a news conference in the White House Rose Garden.

Jared Kushner has a lot on his plate. The White House senior adviser was tasked this week with conducting research into the coronavirus to help Trump decide whether to declare a national emergency. According to Politico, Kushner is talking to 'relevant parties' and will 'present his findings to the president'. It appears that one of these 'relevant parties' is an emergency room doctor called Kurt Kloss, father of Jared's sister-in-law Karlie. And Dr Kloss sought the advice of other medical professionals on Kushner's behalf...in a Facebook group with almost 22,000 members. 'If you were in charge of Federal response to the Pandemic what would your recommendation be,' Kloss wrote in the private group Wednesday, according to screenshots passed to The Spectator.

There are no atheists in foxholes, and no libertarians in a pandemic. As the spread of the COVID-19 virus in the United States starts to resemble the exponential outbreaks in countries where the pandemic is more advanced, the American public wants the kind of security that only government can provide. Donald Trump was elected to provide security, whether from the domestic challenge of outsourcing or the foreign challenge of a rising China. In recent days, he has failed in judgment, in leadership and in decision-making. Only after the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic did he address the nation and announce the closure of America’s borders.

‘Hubris is one of the great renewable resources,’  said P.J. O’Rourke, and American politicians have a habit of proving him right.In 2016, Hillary Clinton became hubristic. ‘Happy Birthday to this future president,’ she (or one of her minions) tweeted, famously, on October 26 that year. Barack Obama also stupidly ignored the ancient wisdom and invited nemesis. ‘At least I will go down as a president,’ he taunted Trump on TV, just a few weeks before Donald Trump won the election. What foolish pride!In 2020, however, it is the Republicans, not the Democrats, who seem to be tempting fate. Trump always toys with excessive arrogance and has a habit of getting away with it.

I like to keep a couple of books within easy reach of my desk to remind myself what sort of creature I am dealing with. As I often write about academics and academic administrators, one of these is Ralph Buchsbaum’s Animals Without Backbones: An Introduction to the Invertebrates, whose title perfectly captures the mushy, moist, moral manner of those matchless, modern martinets. Since I also often write about what Lionel Trilling called the ‘bloody crossroads’, where politics and culture meet, the other book within easy reach is Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.  The chief instigator of madness these days is Donald Trump. He is like that old-fashioned confection called Fizzies.

President Trump’s woman troubles never seem to go away. A recording aired by ABC News today indicates that Trump himself demanded the ouster of the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, during a dinner with Lev Parnas, whom he claims he never knew. He did. Trump declared at an April 30, 2018 dinner that included Parnas, 'Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it.'It took a while but eventually Trump’s paladins did. They understood that by 'take her out', the president didn’t mean ask her to go to a fine restaurant or the ballet. They had other ideas. Eventually, Yovanovitch was dismissed and replaced by William Taylor. Look how well that turned out.