Donald trrump

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.

The president delivered an address last night about the Wuhan flu, aka novel coronavirus, aka (if you want to sound scary/scientific 'COVID-19'). The speech was brief, but to the point. It outlined a number of practical steps that the administration has taken, and would be taking, to slow the spread of the disease, help those who contract it, and — just as important—rescue the market from the panic that has surrounded this malady. The wretched Jim Acosta, court jester on CNN, complained about Trump calling the virus ‘foreign’ and his identifying the source of the virus as China. That was 'smacking of xenophobia' said the babbling head.

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.

‘We’re going to have insurance for everybody.’ That was the promise Donald Trump made on healthcare in January 2017. ‘There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.’ President Trump has failed to deliver on this promise. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are now fighting it out for the Democratic nomination. Both Bernie and Joe promise increased investment in healthcare, and public support for increased government spending continues to grow. Calling Sanders a socialist might have worked 35 years ago, but it might not be enough today. Polling suggests he could beat Trump in November.

‘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.

If there ever were a theme to emerge from the Trump era it is this: hypocrisy. We're all guilty, we all change our minds and contradict ourselves on occasion. So it is that we come full circle during the ascendancy of Joe Biden and observe that the very same commentators and pundits who once suggested that Donald Trump was mentally unfit for office find themselves enthusiastically endorsing one Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. for president. There's something especially egregious about declaring Trump intellectually incapable of governing while supporting the candidacy of a man who often forgets where he is and the office for which he's running. In the spirit of the time we find ourselves living in, let's name and shame the worst offenders.

Was I wrong, or only early? After Joe Biden’s win in the South Carolina primary, I wrote that his victory 'will not, as some pundits are claiming, "resuscitate" or "breathe life" into the ailing former vice president’s asphyxiating campaign. That ship has sailed, as we’ll all see on Tuesday when Bernie Sanders and Mike Bloomberg divide up most of the delegate cake.' Biden certainly performed better than I thought he would, Bernie a little worse, and mini Mike, despite all his money, was nowhere to be seen. (Neither was the unpleasant female who is senior senator from Massachussetts, but that is another story, beside the point in a column about the race to secure the Democratic nomination for president.

This article is in The Spectator’s March 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. For most of the past 200 years, the left, whether revolutionary or liberal, derived power and popularity from being on the side of freedom. If you resented the economic, social and political privileges enjoyed by hereditary aristocrats and landowners, you were on the left. If you chafed against the restraints imposed on what you could read, write, say, think or do by established churches or majoritarian cultural Christianity, you had reason to support one left-wing movement or another — philosophes and Jacobins in the 18th century, liberals in the 19th century, the American Civil Liberties Union in the 20th.

President Donald Trump has ruffled yet more feathers in the past two weeks by serving up his opinions on the Justice Department and the Supreme Court. The president’s critics say his actions are an assault on democratic institutions and a tipping of the scales of justice. His allies argue that the president has every right to express his discontent with elements of the judicial system after the farce of the last three years.  Trump kicked off his feud with the DoJ by weighing on federal prosecutors’ recommended seven-to-nine-year sentence for political consultant Roger Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering.

The Nevada caucuses confirm that Sen. Amy Klobuchar has clung to the ledge by her fingernails as long as she could and will almost certainly fall off on Super Tuesday. It also confirms that the end is nigh for the Pete Buttigieg phenomenon, the typecasters’ candidate, a prefabricated person with all the outer ingredients but no relevant governmental or equivalent experience, no fixed beliefs, and nothing but flippant and fluently well-rehearsed answers to all subjects; an articulate facade with nothing tangible behind it. Klobuchar and Buttigieg both have made a valued contribution and if Klobuchar had had more panache, she might have made a strong run for the nomination.

‘If we put our trust in Him, if we place this miracle of democracy from sea to shining sea. then He will bless America beyond all that we could ask or imagine.’ That’s how Vice President Mike Pence ended his remarks as he introduced President Trump in Colorado Springs. Pence was of course referring to the Almighty, but you wouldn’t know it. In the small maxed-out arena, the large crowd was there to listen to Trump’s sermon. Colorado Springs is known as one of the most religious cities in America. NPR dubbed the city a ‘Mecca for Evangelical Christians’, while the Guardian labeled it ‘a playground for pro-life, pro-gun evangelical Christians’. There were gloves in back pockets and more work-boots than Birkenstocks present.

Roger Stone was well-turned out for his sentencing in a Washington courthouse, sporting a blue overcoat with a dark velvet collar and a black Homburg that was first popularized by the British prime minister Anthony Eden. Two rows of supporters showed up in the courtroom to cheer him on. My guess is that he was delighted by the 40-month sentence and $20,000 fine handed down by Judge Amy Berman Jackson. Now Stone gets to emulate his heroes in the Nixon administration such as G. Gordon Liddy, who served time in the hoosegow and were able to demonstrate their loyalty to the boss. Going to jail would be one of the best things ever to happen to Stone. It would be the capstone to his self-mythologization as an adversary of the liberal elite.