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Fire,
pestilence
and a
country
at war
with
itself:
the
Trump
presidency
is over
Robert
Reich
TheGuardian.Com
You’d be
forgiven
if you
hadn’t
noticed.
His
verbal
bombshells
are
louder
than
ever,
but
Donald J
Trump is
no
longer
president
of the
United
States.
By
having
no
constructive
response
to any
of the
monumental
crises
now
convulsing
America,
Trump
has
abdicated
his
office.
He is
not
governing.
He’s
golfing,
watching
cable TV
and
tweeting.
How
has
Trump
responded
to the
widespread
unrest
following
the
murder
in
Minneapolis
of
George
Floyd, a
black
man who
died
after a
white
police
officer
knelt on
his neck
for
minutes
as he
was
handcuffed
on the
ground?
Trump
called
the
protesters
“thugs”
and
threatened
to have
them
shot.
“When
the
looting
starts,
the
shooting
starts,”
he
tweeted,
parroting
a former
Miami
police
chief
whose
words
spurred
race
riots in
the late
1960s.
On
Saturday,
he
gloated
about
“the
most
vicious
dogs,
and most
ominous
weapons”
awaiting
protesters
outside
the
White
House,
should
they
ever
break
through
Secret
Service
lines.
Trump’s
response
to the
last
three
ghastly
months
of
mounting
disease
and
death
has been
just as
heedless.
Since
claiming
Covid-19
was a
“Democratic
hoax”
and
muzzling
public
health
officials,
he has
punted
management
of the
coronavirus
to the
states.
Governors
have had
to find
ventilators
to keep
patients
alive
and
protective
equipment
for
hospital
and
other
essential
workers
who lack
it,
often
bidding
against
each
other.
They
have had
to
decide
how,
when and
where to
reopen
their
economies.
Trump
has
claimed
“no
responsibility
at all”
for
testing
and
contact-tracing
– the
keys to
containing
the
virus.
His new
“plan”
places
responsibility
on
states
to do
their
own
testing
and
contact-tracing.
Trump is
also
awol in
the
worst
economic
crisis
since
the
Great
Depression.
More
than 41
million
Americans
are
jobless.
In the
coming
weeks
temporary
eviction
moratoriums
are set
to end
in half
of the
states.
One-fifth
of
Americans
missed
rent
payments
this
month.
Extra
unemployment
benefits
are set
to
expire
at the
end of
July.
What
is
Trump’s
response?
Like
Herbert
Hoover,
who in
1930
said
“the
worst is
behind
us” as
thousands
starved,
Trump
says the
economy
will
improve
and does
nothing
about
the
growing
hardship.
The
Democratic-led
House
passed a
$3tn
relief
package
on 15
May.
Mitch
McConnell
has
recessed
the
Senate
without
taking
action
and
Trump
calls
the bill
dead on
arrival.
What
about
other
pressing
issues a
real
president
would be
addressing?
The
House
has
passed
nearly
400
bills
this
term,
including
measures
to
reduce
climate
change,
enhance
election
security,
require
background
checks
on gun
sales,
reauthorize
the
Violence
Against
Women
Act and
reform
campaign
finance.
All are
languishing
in
McConnell’s
inbox.
Trump
doesn’t
seem to
be aware
of any
of them.
There is
nothing
inherently
wrong
with
golfing,
watching
television
and
tweeting.
But if
that’s
pretty
much all
that a
president
does
when the
nation
is
engulfed
in
crises,
he is
not a
president.
Trump’s
tweets
are no
substitute
for
governing.
They are
mostly
about
getting
even.
When
he’s not
fomenting
violence
against
black
protesters,
he’s
accusing
a media
personality
of
committing
murder,
retweeting
slurs
about a
black
female
politician’s
weight
and the
House
speaker’s
looks,
conjuring
up
conspiracies
against
himself
supposedly
organized
by
Hillary
Clinton
and
Barack
Obama,
and
encouraging
his
followers
to
“liberate”
their
states
from
lockdown
restrictions.
He
tweets
bogus
threats
that he
has no
power to
carry
out –
withholding
funds
from
states
that
expand
absentee
voting,
“overruling”
governors
who
don’t
allow
places
of
worship
to
reopen
“right
away”,
and
punishing
Twitter
for
factchecking
him.
And
he lies
incessantly.
In
reality,
Donald
Trump
doesn’t
run the
government
of the
United
States.
He
doesn’t
manage
anything.
He
doesn’t
organize
anyone.
He
doesn’t
administer
or
oversee
or
supervise.
He
doesn’t
read
memos.
He hates
meetings.
He has
no
patience
for
briefings.
His
White
House is
in
perpetual
chaos.
His
advisers
aren’t
truth-tellers.
They’re
toadies,
lackeys,
sycophants
and
relatives.
Since
moving
into the
Oval
Office
in
January
2017,
Trump
hasn’t
shown an
ounce of
interest
in
governing.
He
obsesses
only
about
himself.
But
it has
taken
the
present
set of
crises
to
reveal
the
depths
of his
self-absorbed
abdication
– his
utter
contempt
for his
job, his
total
repudiation
of his
office.
Trump’s
nonfeasance
goes far
beyond
an
absence
of
leadership
or
inattention
to
traditional
norms
and
roles.
In a
time of
national
trauma,
he has
relinquished
the core
duties
and
responsibilities
of the
presidency.
He
is no
longer
president.
The
sooner
we stop
treating
him as
if he
were,
the
better.
Robert
Reich, a
former
US
secretary
of
labor,
is
professor
of
public
policy
at the
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
and the
author
of
Saving
Capitalism:
For the
Many,
Not the
Few and
The
Common
Good.
His new
book,
The
System:
Who
Rigged
It, How
We Fix
It, is
out now.
He is a
columnist
for
Guardian
US
America
faces an
epic
choice
...
...
in the
coming
year,
and the
results
will
define
the
country
for a
generation.
These
are
perilous
times.
Over the
last
three
years,
much of
what the
Guardian
holds
dear has
been
threatened
–
democracy,
civility,
truth.
Science
and
reason
are in a
battle
with
conjecture
and
instinct
to
determine
public
policy
in this
time of
a
pandemic.
Partisanship
and
economic
interests
are
playing
their
part,
too.
Meanwhile,
misinformation
and
falsehoods
are
routine.
At a
time
like
this, an
independent
news
organisation
that
fights
for data
over
dogma,
and fact
over
fake, is
not just
optional.
It is
essential.
The
Guardian
has been
significantly
impacted
by the
pandemic.
Like
many
other
news
organisations,
we are
facing
an
unprecedented
collapse
in
advertising
revenues.
We rely
to an
ever
greater
extent
on our
readers,
both for
the
moral
force to
continue
doing
journalism
at a
time
like
this and
for the
financial
strength
to
facilitate
that
reporting.
We
believe
every
one of
us
deserves
equal
access
to
fact-based
news and
analysis.
We’ve
decided
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Guardian
journalism
free for
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readers,
regardless
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they
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This is
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in all
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