Tag Archives: wartime president

medical news, national news

How’s the ‘wartime president’ doing?

How does a “wartime president” spend his days?

He doesn’t spend them tweeting petty, petulant attacks against his political foes. The way I always have understood the term “wartime president,” he focuses tightly on the task at hand, which is to defeat the “enemy” with which he is at war.

Along the way, the “wartime president” unifies the nation. He speaks to our higher ideals. He puts partisan differences aside and offers words of measured wisdom.

How is Donald John “Tweeter in Chief” Trump doing as a “wartime president”? Not well … at all!

The enemy he once declared was “under control” now has killed 80,000 Americans. The coronavirus pandemic that Donald Trump once dismissed as not a serious threat to Americans has become, um, a deadly threat.

Trump called himself a “wartime president” in the mold, I suppose, of Presidents Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and for good measure, let’s throw in George W. Bush.

That’s where the comparison ends.

Trump has busied himself with Twitter messages that deal with everything but the “war” that has spiraled out of control on his watch. He attacks his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, the media, Democrats in general, even some Republican conservatives. Trump hurls blame at every target imaginable for the pandemic that is showing no sign at all of letting up. He castigates Democratic governors.

Trump’s primary focus is on his re-election.

A “wartime president” by all rights shouldn’t have the amount of time Trump spends bellowing about matters that have nothing to do with the fight. Donald Trump is, as fellow Republican Mitt Romney once described him, a “phony and a fraud.”

medical news, national news

How can this ‘wartime president’ lead by declining to set example?

I cannot get past Donald Trump’s declaration that he would forgo a health agency’s recommendation to wear a mask while interacting with other human beings.

Think of this. Trump wants to be considered a “wartime president” as the nation fights the coronavirus pandemic. Then the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that Americans should wear masks. Trump’s response? He said the CDC recommendation is “voluntary,” so he won’t follow the agency’s advice.

If he wants us to think of him as a wartime president, shouldn’t he act like one? To my way of thinking, that would entail a president setting the example that others would follow. Yep, that means wearing a mask in public.

Think, too, of how such a gesture might play to critics such as myself. I am, as you know, an avid — and at times admittedly angry — critic of Donald Trump. The sight of Trump wearing a mask while interacting with others would send a positive message to me. It wouldn’t entice me to vote for Trump this November, but it would draw praise from this blog.

My wife and I are following the CDC advice. Given that the president works for us — and that we do not work for him — it makes sense to me that our “employee,” the president, ought to be follow the lead of his “bosses.” I trust you get my drift.

Trump made some lame and phony excuse for not wearing a mask. He said something about the “image” of a president wearing a mask in the Oval Office while greeting another head of state. Well, as former VP Joe Biden once said of the enactment of the Affordable Care Act … big fu**ing deal.

Why not make visitors to the Oval Office wear a mask, too? If Trump is going to declare himself to be a wartime president, then he ought to take charge and act like someone willing to sacrifice in a time of war. And he could demand that others make the same sacrifice.

That’s what real leaders do.

national news

‘Wartime president’ whiffs yet again

Donald Trump wants to be known as a “wartime president.”

Got that? Then someone has to explain to me how a wartime president can call himself “a backup” to states and local governments that are waging the war against an “invisible enemy” in the form of the coronavirus pandemic.

Wartime presidents don’t cede leadership to governmental underlings. They take charge. They take command. They lead. They inspire. They unify the nation behind a common goal: to defeat the enemy.

Yet there was this president, writing a crappy, whiny letter to U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, telling Schumer that the president is a “backup” to governors demanding more masks, more ventilators, more assistance in the fight against the killer virus.

Trump also called himself a “backup” during his daily White House briefing today, when he complained about governors making too many demands of the federal government.

Wartime president? Really, Mr. President? This individual is nothing of the sort.

national news

When will Trump act like a ‘wartime president’?

Donald J. Trump calls himself a “wartime president.” He says he is fighting an “invisible enemy.” As near as I can tell, the fight has just begun.

When, I have to ask, is Donald Trump going to start acting like a “wartime president”? When will the commander in chief cease with the phony happy talk and the hollow boasts about what a “fantastic” job he and his response team are doing in fighting the coronavirus pandemic?

My guess? He won’t stop the false bravado. He won’t in effect declare a state of war against this invisible enemy. Why? Because doing so just might send a signal that he and his team haven’t done quite as good a job as Trump keeps saying they have done.

Moreover, a wartime president doesn’t pit Americans against each other. He doesn’t criticize politicians from the opposing party. A wartime president calls all political leaders — from both parties — into the same room and talks candidly to them about the challenges the nation faces.

A wartime president calls a truce with governors and mayors who are struggling with their own battles. He offers to provide unquestioned, unqualified support in their battles.

A president at war with an invisible enemy damn sure doesn’t condemn the media — print, digital or broadcast — that are doing their job in reporting the progress of the battle to the public.

Are we at war, Mr. President, with a common and deadly enemy? Or are you at war with those who merely question the manner in which you are behaving?

national news

‘Wartime president’? Are you serious, Mr. POTUS?

Donald John Trump clearly is fixated with macho-sounding language, even as he fails repeatedly to act like the person he portrays himself as being.

He said today at a White House briefing that he considers himself a “wartime president” in light of the struggle the nation is fighting against the coronavirus pandemic.

OK, so he wants to wear the mantle once worn by the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman, LBJ and George W. Bush, all of whom presided over a nation that was — and is — engaged in actual wars. Trump now is seeking to elevate the struggle against the coronavirus to what we have faced over many decades.

However, Donald Trump has yet to demonstrate the kind and quality of leadership that previous presidents have sought to exhibit. The federal government is still struggling to clear its throat and speak with a single, united, coherent voice on the fight against the pandemic.

In the meantime, Trump continues to fire salvos at the press, whose job is to chronicle events in real time. Does a “wartime president” actually have the time to concoct idiotic attack lines against the media, leveling ridiculous allegations that the media are deliberately conspiring to undermine him?

Hey, I totally get why Trump wants to be called a “wartime president” in an election year. He likely wants to parlay that label into a campaign mantra, seeking to encourage voters to back him because, well, we’re in the “middle of a war. Why do we want to change commanders in chief when we’re at war?”

It’s a cynical and utterly preposterous notion.