Today, in our pursuit of insightful punditry, we are taking a time-warping fictional flight of political inquiry.
We are reporting details of a fact-based (but not actually factual) conversation I recently had in an interview that happened just by chance. We were seatmates on a make-believe flight back to the USA from Europe, fleeing home after being trapped in the coronavirus pandemic panic. I dreaded the trip until I reached my seat and saw a famous face.
"I'm Donald Trump," said my seatmate, reflexively reaching to shake my hand. But I went for the Rx-approved elbow-bump; and he liked that. "I'm really a germophobe � big-time!" he said. "Aren't we all, these days," I said.
(Time Out: For the analytical purposes of this one column, we will be doing some depoliticizing role-playing. We are pretending Trump isn't yet president even though we are talking about the battle against the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. We are pretending Barack Obama is still president. My seatmate Trump and I will be talking about how he thinks his ex-political adversary, Obama, is battling the pandemic. We'll be pretending Obama said the words about coronavirus that were actually uttered by Trump. And we'll hear what Trump would be thinking about those precise quotes if he thought they had come from Obama and not from his own oratory. Please work with me on this; it can't be any worse than TV's usual talking heads.)
After takeoff, my seatmate and I quickly bonded. I got us talking about one of his favorite topics: How Obama and his administration really messed up ("big-time," I said) ever since China's New Year's Eve announcement that Wuhan city was plagued by a new, incurable disease: "Coronavirus."
"Ever since then," I began, "President Obama sounded like he was in denial about the coronavirus danger."
"Exactly!" said my seatmate, Trump. Pulling out his iPhone, Trump showed me a Jan. 22, 2020, video of Sean Hannity actually asking the president (who we are pretending is "Obama," remember?): "Are you worried about a pandemic?"
"No, we're not at all," replied the president. "And we have it totally under control."
My seatmate, Trump, guffawed like it was his favorite Henny Youngman punchline. "No pandemic? Total control? Give me a break!"
Trump then showed me another video of the president speaking right after the World Health Organization officially declared coronavirus was a global pandemic. "This is a pandemic," said the president we're calling "Obama." And he boasted: "I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic."
Say what? Trump, never one for subtlety, spread his hands wide and trumpeted a vaudevillian fanfare: "Ta-Da!" Then he showed us the February video of "Obama" telling reporters that America has 15 cases of coronavirus � and claiming that "within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero."
"Zero?" said Trump. "What a goofball! No wonder no world leader today trusts the word of America's president. Sad."
My seatmate and I agreed that it had been virtually criminal malfeasance for America to have failed back in January and certainly in February to amass all the test kits it would need to isolate and defeat coronavirus. "That's because we don't have a businessman as president," Trump said (referring of course to our 2020's "President Obama"). "A politician, especially just a community activist, doesn't know how to do what we businessmen can do."
EPILOGUE: But this week, a reversal occurred � and so our column must execute a reversal and return to reality by talking, from now on, about the real President Trump's real words and deeds. With the pandemic now infecting every state � New York, most of all � the real President Trump executed a 180 degree reversal and began admitting (not denying) the obvious. He admitted the pandemic isn't under control. He and his pandemic team appeared on TV to show leadership in fighting to combat the pandemic.
And he hit the pause button in his live-stream taunts of perceived adversaries. Indeed, one Trump target, New York's Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, declared: "The president and I agreed yesterday (that) we are fighting the same war... We are in the same trench. I have your back. You have my back.... He's been very creative and very energetic. And I thank him for his partnership."
Alas, a day later, Trump was again taunting critics and bashing media messengers who bore bad news or questioned his two months of delay and denial. Meanwhile we all suffer because America is no longer leading the world's pandemic struggle. As Beth Cameron, who headed the Obama and Trump White House's global health security office � until Trump abolished it � observed on MSNBC:
"The U.S. government could absolutely be leading on ...a global response... It would make us safer here in the United States in the end."
