Documenting Trump's failure

Letter to the editor in today's NY Times:

Trump’s Slow Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic

In documenting President Trump’s failure to heed early warnings of the pandemic, the article refers to “six long weeks before President Trump finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing.”

Yet the president still has not taken “aggressive action” to confront the danger. He has neither required shelter-in-place nor leveraged federal power to implement a Manhattan Project for acquiring and allocating test kits, protective personal equipment and ventilators. 

The stimulus bill bears his signature, but Mr. Trump played no role in ensuring that it would provide relief to everyday Americans. House Democrats did that crucial work.

Mr. Trump’s only aggressive actions to date have been downplaying the risk, peddling unproven cures, blaming the Chinese, spreading false hope of quickly reopening the economy and giving himself high marks despite his own negligence.

Aaron Belkin

San Francisco

The writer is a professor of political science at San Francisco State University.