Professor Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security, wrote a piece for TomDispatch on how President Trump’s key long-term goals are gaining momentum amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whether Trump is fiddling these days or not, one thing is certain: in a Nero-like fashion, he continues to be irresponsibly unresponsive to the crisis caused by Covid-19. One reason may be that, however inadvertently, the arrival of the pandemic has helped green-light plans and projects he’s held dear to his heart and that had, before the crisis, repeatedly encountered opposition.
Here are six examples of how the coronavirus, like a malign magic wand, has helped cast a disempowering spell over that opposition and so furthered Trump’s long-term goals.
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With some of his long-stymied plans now falling into place as the devastating pandemic hits, how telling of the president to tweet a picture of himself as Nero, as he delays or refuses to provide adequate amounts of medical supplies from reaching needy states. In unsettling ways, the crisis is working for him as previously untenable policy options are becoming essential to curtailing the coronavirus.