Today every morning in America seems like a trip on rough seas into unmapped territory, where a raging pandemic is spreading disease, and political leaders more often than not seem unable to guide citizens to safety. In 39 states, the number of new coronavirus cases this week exceeded the week before, straining hospitals and health care workers in many places.
The President of the United States took a hands-off approach to the biggest crisis the nation has faced in decades and let his administration throw potshots at Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert who remains a trusted authority. A smiling Donald Trump posed behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, endorsing a lineup of Goya food products after the chief executive of that company declared his support for the President. The governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, said he favored wearing masks, but signed an executive order Wednesday countermanding masks mandates imposed by local officials in his state. And a day later he sued the mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, to cancel her order requiring them.
"Kemp ought to listen to Black women and men, and in this particular instance the Black woman Covid-19 victim who happens to be the mayor of Atlanta," wrote Emory University law professor Dorothy Brown. "While we all face risks from Covid-19, the risk Black Americans face is even higher."
In what Peter Bergen called an "unheard of" move, Trump's trade adviser, Peter Navarro, wrote an op-ed attacking the administration's own expert that was published in USA Today and contained a number of misleading claims, as the newspaper's editorial page editor later said. "The attacks on Fauci by Navarro are symptomatic of a deep problem in the Trump administration that begins with Trump himself, which is to prioritize wishful thinking over science," Bergen wrote.
"Instead of providing any element of national leadership to combat the coronavirus, the Trump White House is employing the oldest political trick in the book, which is to shoot the messenger who brings unwelcome news, in this case a 79-year-old doctor who 67% of the public trust to give them accurate information about the virus as opposed to only 26% for Trump, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll last month."
Michael D'Antonio called attention to "the difference between Fauci and Trump: One man, a dedicated public servant, offered his best analysis and, when new data emerged, corrected himself without hesitation so that lives might be saved. The other dug in to a don't-worry-about it position and has refused to budge as the passing months have led the US to become the leading global hotspot."
Ivanka Trump's Tuesday
On the same day as Navarro's op-ed, Trump's daughter and adviser, Ivanka Trump, made news twice. Jen Psaki wrote that she launched a "tone-deaf" campaign calling on "the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs because of Covid-19 to 'find something new.'"
"Ivanka Trump has never taken out student loans, never subsisted on
