| | | You Cheered as He Fucked Up. No Take Backs, Trumpists.
HECKUVA JOB
Rick Wilson
When tested by the fire of crisis, Trump showed us what he's always been; a weak, spoiled, intellectually vacant conman who has stumbled through a life of betrayal and failure papered over by bullshit and public relations. The media image from The Apprentice that hypnotized so many Trump voters was always the product of Mark Burnett's writers' room, not reality. The bold leader was a teleprompter confection, D-grade celebrity playing a C-grade CEO in a reality show.
Sorry, MAGAs, but Trump must face blame for the viral Chernobyl that is rolling over our population now; the one thing you never get back when fighting an epidemic is time. He spent weeks spinning that Coronavirus/COVID-10 was no big deal, and that there was no crisis about to scythe through our nation.
He had the usual vigorous ass-kissing from the human centipede of Trump media bootlicks, toadies, and ball-washers from the Fox C-suite down to lunatic bloggers and social-media flotsam. They've been very busy the last few days trying to retcon Trump's colossal incompetence and indifference from January until this week.
He soft-pedaled the crisis even as it grew in scope and risk. His minions and minders repeatedly said that this crisis was contained. He promised a vaccine that is, at best, a year away. He promised testing, without the intention or ability to deliver. He compared it to the common flu, which left disease specialists and epidemiologists heads exploding worldwide. He failed as a leader, from the very start.
In my political practice, one thing I handled outside campaigns was crisis management for politicians, corporations, and governments. While it's not always glamorous, crisis management specialists do a vital job of — to use a term of political art — unfucking human errors. Good leadership helps.
Good leaders react to a crisis swiftly and honestly. Bad leaders blameshift, lie, cover-up and try to rewrite history. Good crisis leadership has a set of consistent characteristics; it is honest, transparent, and prompt. The path Trump chose, naturally, was the opposite.
We Are So Screwed
"China virus" IS part of the screw up on Trump's part. he can't ragetweet a virus into submission, so he is looking for a scapegoat. It is part of the repeated Trump MO when he feels impotent. Pointing that out IS focusing on Trump's defective manner of handling problems. |
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