Coronavirus Is The Smokescreen For Trump’s Agenda
By: Dave Olsen
Tags: Trump, Immigration, Covid 19, Politics, Coronavirus

Coronavirus Is The Smokescreen For Trump’s Agenda

The President’s contradictory policies and statements suggest that, for Trump, this is all about winning the election.

The President is scared, no doubt about it.

Not like every other world leader — particularly Boris Johnson — who are scared of the threat of the coronavirus to their people. Rather, Trump is frightened by the threat of consignment to the list of one-term Presidents, without even a primary challenge to blame for it.

After all, the polls have Biden 4 points, 6 points, 8 points — even 11 points — above Trump, a margin which would be hard to overcome even with the distorting effect of the electoral college, unfit for purpose. What’s more, the former vice-President is on the rise in the polls, and leads the President in many battleground and red states, like Florida and Arizona.

All that, with Biden still $187 million behind Trump in donations.

But even in this scenario, you might expect the President of the United States to be focused on dealing with the crisis that he says makes him a “war President”, rather than on his re-election campaign.

No such luck.

The President, in the hopes of re-building the economy quickly and entering the final months of the campaign on the bounce, is doing everything he can to ensure that states re-open and get America going again.

His action is mostly, as described by Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, “background noise” compared to the actual work going on to establish the scientific realities and how and when states should be reopened.

This background noise nevertheless cuts through the real work going on and makes it into the news cycle, and thus into the social media feeds and television screens of millions of Americans. Trump knows that he can look like he’s doing something without actually doing anything.

The biggest attempt his administration has made to really put the meat onto the bones of this policy was laughable. The Opening Up America Again document, which deploys Trump’s favourite fourth slogan word to appeal to the nostalgic tendencies of his 17th-century-orientated base, sets out, very briefly, three phases of reopening.

It gives no detail around these three phases, and I think most members of the public could have come up with something comparable to it. “Re-open a bit, then a bit more, then fully” is not really a complex three-stage plan.

However, while the President is seemingly keen to get the economy going again and reopen the country — even if he doesn’t have “total authority” as claimed repeatedly at one of his curséd press briefings — Trump has also issued an executive order halting most immigration, in a bid to further mitigate the virus.

These two ideas are clearly contradictory.

How can it be that we need to simultaneously re-open and double down?

Indeed, we do not need to take this course of action. These two actions are simply different parts of Trump’s agenda; the first a vote-winner (by re-building the economy); the second a base-please which is sure to rally his 40%.

Coronavirus, for 45, has always been an immigration issue, an “America First” issue, not a scientific and natural issue.

This has never been about following expert advice (such as his public dismissal of the recommendation to wear masks when outside, again at one of the damned briefings). It has always been about ‘solving’ the ‘virus of immigration’.

Trump’s cited reason for attacking immigration is protecting American workers both from the virus and from replacement by cheap immigrant labour. Clearly, he doesn’t understand that any issues in this regard might be resolved more easily and humanely by raising the minimum wage.

This sort of policy mess is exactly why I would vote for Biden if I were living in America.