The White House can propose and advocate policies, and it has an effect. Trump has promised to do the former and has never done it. Why is he promising to do it if it has no effect?
Nevermind that in the states the main actors responsible in times of health crises are the local State authorities not the Federal ones. Your 'under his care' is terribly loaded.
He is also influential among a large group of Americans, as is any president.
He called for Obama to resign after a single case of ebola[1] in the US. Clearly he agrees with me that the president has an effect in fighting infectious disease.
1.https://www.axios.com/trump-obama-resign-787b042d-0361-48f1-...
Yet this has nothing to do with the fact that whether to go into lock-down or not and what kind of measures to take are taken by State actors, not the federal government. We can see that right now with the debate on school opening: the Federal government has no power.
I am not sure where you think that States play almost no role, the USA is one of the countries where the local States have the most power compared to any other Western democracy out there.
But the US is near the middle-bottom of per capita deaths in Western countries and far behind several European countries.[1]
[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...
If we're just doing per-capita snapshots, the US is doing 8x worse than India and 20x worse than China. Both countries that are far poorer and more densely populated.
By literally any measure, it's been an indefensible performance. Total shitshow.
I would compare the US with countries like Cambodia which aren’t doing a great job of even identifying cases.
A real ranking shows the US is doing far worse (orders of magnitude worse) than many countries[1].
One of the few countries doing worse is Sweden, which actively did nothing. They serve as a (flawed, but interesting) baseline.
Our own health officials are blowing whistles, criticizing the federal response in the press, and (universally) disagreeing with Trump's dismissals, false predictions, and insane medical advice.
To think the US is doing well is utter delusion. I don't know what else to call it.
but, but, but... it was going to kill millions!!!
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/19/the-coronavirus-could-kill-m...
https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus/2020/03/millions-could-...
And as it turns out, by being a competent leader, you can actually do a hell of a lot without having absolute power.
Yes. Trump is 100% to blame. Hundreds of thousands of people died, whereas if we had Jacinda, maybe a couple hundred.
Lol, no rational person believes that. The USA is not a small, remote, island nation.
https://time.com/5824042/new-zealand-coronavirus-elimination...
Yet if Trump copied Ms. Ardern's lead and postponed our national election in Nov, I'm sure you'd tell me why it was an outrageous and illegal maneuver.
This conversation serves no purpose.
Let's not forget that it isn't just New Zealand that has utterly destroyed the idea that leaders have no influence over infection rates. Most of the entire world has done better than the US. Hell, even India has done better than the US, despite their massive problems with high population density and unsanitary urban living conditions.
No rational person thinks that the US response was appropriate, and no rational person thinks that responsibility belongs anywhere else except our dipshit in chief. But sure, keep making excuses for him.
There are things he can do to set the stage for sure.
If he does pardoning Snowden and making that into an issue is a brilliant move. That will sting hard.
[1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-rejects-trumps-push-f...
Trump: Remember everyone, Biden used to spy on you.
This is similar to when he did a press conference with all of Bill Clinton’s accusers. Just a means to an end for Trump.