At this time they were trying to eject him from office on the most ridiculous of basis. Nearly all of the media and all of government was focused on damaging him. Because of this they could not bring themselves to line up behind him and follow his lead.
Think about that for a moment. Love or hate Trump, in that moment, early next year, the right move for the nation --not for politicians and the media-- would have been to say: "Mr. President, what do you want us to do. We are 100% with you."
The media, in particular, could have been far more useful to the nation and the world. Instead of focusing on their usual nonsense and web of lies they could have engaged in real journalism and delivered actionable information.
Instead of NY and San Francisco politicians saying things like "everything is OK, it's just the flu, go to festivals, get in the subway, etc." they should have contacted the White house for actionable intelligence on why they were sounding the alarm as they did.
Remember that at the same time Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx where on TV telling us a tsunami was coming, New York officials (and our current President and VP) were saying this was racist, xenophobic and nothing to worry about.
Like I said, I hope historians paint the entire picture and do so with the truth.
The Trump administration IS the US government; he staffed the CDC, he controlled the messaging, he denied repeatedly that COVID was serious. It's not his public manner or communication skills that did the damage, it's his outright lying and deception that he and his administration did on a daily basis. Just because he was right about imposing a travel ban doesn't make up for the complete failure of his administration.
I was trying to be kind and not say all of the Democratic party and all of the left media. Which is the truth.
How could it be a failure if millions of people per day are being vaccinated today because of what his administration did while the entire Democratic party and news media were focusing on trying to destroy the man, his family and his business. C'mon.
Biden is trying to take credit for this. He didn't do shit. Manufacturing and distributing a complex at this scale isn't something you turn on in a week or two months. It takes a VERY long time. Having done it in almost exactly a year is an absolutely incredible accomplishment and the only one who can take credit for it is Trump. We can be critical of what he did wrong --and there's a long list-- but we also have to be honest and truthful about everything else.
Aside from that, I always say that nothing in life is reduced to a single variable. People like to reduce causality to a single variable because it's convenient and far simpler to think about. Life is a complex multivariate problem and what we are talking about isn't an exception.
Everyone in our government performed poorly during this crisis.
Democrats chose to wage war during a pandemic rather than get things done.
The media helped them.
Trump was an absolute idiot in public and truly inspired projectile vomiting almost every time he spoke.
Prior administrations --going back decades-- compromised our ability to respond to such emergencies through a range of actions, again, dating back decades.
And, of course, there's the American people, who seem to love to stop thinking critically, take sides, refuse to recognize when the common good is more important than our own little selfish impulses, etc.
I could not possibly list the variables that went into getting us to where we are today. Nobody could. It would, however, be nice if we could stop the nonsense for long enough for an honest root cause analysis and attempt to take action to not ever do this again.
Here's something that's very clear to me: If we continue to behave this way we are ensuring China's supremacy in the world order for one hundred to two hundred years. And they know it. More power to them, they are kicking our ass and executing flawlessly. I don't agree with their politics, but you have to be in awe of what they've been able to accomplish in about fifty years. That takes focus, unity and dedication we do not have and will likely never regain until everyone is wondering why a bag of rice is $100 and we have 25% unemployment.
That's what you wrote. I'm not distorting anything. You seem to want to limit Trump's responsibility to his communication skills. He owned COVID, it was his administration, his Cabinet, the GOP controlled Senate, his CDC where he installed a leader that had huge question marks even before the pandemic. It was assigning his son in-law to the COVID task force. It was his touting quack solutions because he lacked the critical thinking to actually listen to medical professionals.
"Prior administrations" had issued warnings about the potential for this type of pandemic. Warnings that were ignored. (Echoes of 9/11).
You can claim I'm distorting your message, but your message is incoherent and ignoring the facts.
I agree with your take that the impact on America could have been much smaller in all sorts of scenarios, including just taking it more seriously sooner (like during the time frame that you're recounting).
I'm not sure that the travel ban from China in particular would have significantly affected the course of the pandemic in the U.S. We now know that COVID is very often totally asymptomatic and that it had already spread to many countries (possibly including the U.S.) by January of last year. People arriving from countries other than China could easily have introduced it into the U.S., and very possibly did (and certainly have many times since then). The U.S. didn't have the testing or tracing or quarantine capabilities to control the transmission of the epidemic in the community.
This skepticism is not meant to take away from your other points, which all seem right to me. I think many other kinds of responses (or awareness or understanding on the part of the American public) could have had a big effect last January or February. The responses, awareness, and understanding we actually got were terrible.