CNN’s Fareed Zakaria compared President Trump to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in a scathing rebuke of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus.
On his Sunday morning show, Zakaria picked apart each aspect of the COVID-19 virus response from the Trump administration and argued that most of Trump’s supportive scientists were more afraid of angering the president than they were of the outbreak spreading.
“Donald Trump views everything from the narcissistic prism of his ego,” Zakaria said. “He dismisses opposing views and insists that even the senior-most members of his administration repeatedly praise him and his leadership at all times.”
He continued, “Watching the heads of America’s leading science agencies prefacing their statements with ritual praise for the dear leader has been deeply depressing.”
Zakaria compared Trump to Kim, saying, “Come to think of it, the Trump administration has been copying the wrong Korea. Instead of the intelligence and expertise of South Korea, it is emulating the sycophancy, incompetence, and propaganda of North Korea.”
The CNN anchor claimed Trump has created a “vast leadership vacuum” that is hindering the federal government’s ability to fight the coronavirus outbreak. He said the recent steep economic downturn in global markets was partially Trump’s fault.
“Trump has been mostly AWOL,” Zakaria said. “When he does appear, it is to blame the disease on foreigners and announce policies that are designed to reinforce that view. The broad collapse in global markets is surely, in part, a reaction to the vast vacuum of leadership in the White House.”
Zakaria did credit Trump for taking early steps to restrict travel from China into the United States but argued that the president has stumbled ever since.
“Trump did make one good decision: to ban most travelers from China into the United States. That bought the United States time. Alas, that time was wasted,” Zakaria said. “Testing turned into a fiasco. If this were a war, the generals in charge of that operation would have been relieved of their command.”
Although Zakaria said he agreed with the Chinese travel restrictions, he condemned the administration’s decision to ban travel from Europe. He claimed it was too late because the virus was already spreading rapidly in the U.S.
“The thousands of Americans currently in Europe are apparently exempt, as are a small number of others. More importantly, the disease is already in the United States and spreading,” Zakaria said. “The policy was so poorly thought through, that amendments, corrections, and reversals were made to the president’s speech within minutes of his having delivered it. This crisis seems to have been designed to bring out the worst of Trump.”
There are nearly 3,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the U.S., and more than 30 people have died of the illness. Trump declared the COVID-19 virus a national emergency on Friday.
Zakaria said the more drastic actions taken by Trump to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, which is now a pandemic, came too late.
“The evidence is now clear, the spread of the virus can be greatly slowed if governments act early, aggressively, and intelligently,” he said. “Unfortunately, that does not describe the response of the United States government to the coronavirus pandemic.”
