At Thursday evening’s coronavirus crisis press conference, President Trump and his team unveiled their road map to reopening America. It was serious, clearly taking into account the input of public health experts and showing proper deference to the nation’s governors. However, the president’s immature pettiness continues to overshadow and undermine his plan and many of his administration’s other proper coronavirus efforts.
First, there were Trump’s juvenile efforts to make his name appear on the $1,200 coronavirus relief checks mailed out to every citizen who does not have direct deposit set up. This is, frankly, a stupid stunt meant to grab glory and credit for the president, which he does not deserve. Trump actually has no technical authority to sign the checks, too, so his name had to be added under “memo” rather than as an actual signature.
The entire affair was an exercise in ego-stroking, not serious governance.
Trump tried to take credit for the relief payments, something many others played a part in, and claim as his own checks that he is most certainly not paying for. As National Review‘s David Harsanyi put it in a tweet, “Government checks should have the signatures of the recipients’ children and grandchildren” because that’s who really will end up paying for all this deficit-financed aid.
Of course, Trump’s signature stunt isn’t even that big a deal. But it was stupid and petty. Trump supporters and conservatives would have been apoplectic if Obama had ever done something similar. And, unfortunately, this sort of behavior looks like it’s becoming a trend with the president’s approach to the coronavirus.
Thursday evening, it was announced that Trump had invited every single Republican senator to join his bipartisan coronavirus task force… except for one: Sen. Mitt Romney. That’s right. Trump invited every member of the caucus to his crisis response team except for the one Republican senator who voted in favor of impeachment. It’s petty and immature, putting politics over a serious and unified government response to a crisis.
If Trump wants to become the leader we need to get us through this difficult time, he needs to cut all these petty antics out and act like a president. But don’t hold your breath. This is who the president is, for better and for worse.
