Daily Times

President Trump is ingenious-if that is the right word. If facts do not fit into the narrative, his approach is to change the ‘facts’. For instance, he doesn’t like the way his task force on COVID-19 tried to highlight the intensity of the crisis in the US in terms of likely fatalities. He was, therefore, going to disband his task force because they didn’t not fit into his political trajectory, which is to downplay the crisis and highlight the ‘positive’ that is awaiting the country, in terms of an imagined economic recovery. But he seemed to have had second thoughts, as this might not be well received by the people. That might not be the last word, though. The task force might cease to be a public forum or simply ignored.

All through this health crisis, which has hit the US the most, Trump has sought to say different things at different times. Even when conceding that casualties could be high, he has sought to present it in a positive light, saying that if we manage with the lower estimate of several thousands, we (the USA) would have done pretty well. Mostly, he has said that things would be all right in a month or few months.

Trump has hated the Governor of New York state giving his public presentation of daily fatalities in that state, taking away from Trump’s attempt to downplay the crisis. His own political show of daily briefings to garner television time was abandoned after he suggested that injection/ingestion of bleach products was one way of killing coronavirus, which brought derision and disbelief from many; though it is difficult to estimate how much it would, if any, affect his re-election as president.

But it didn’t seem presidential to be making such outrageous and dangerous suggestions and, apparently, on the advice of his media consultants, he wisely abandoned the daily circus of his press briefings. Before he had suggested bleach and similar stuff as a way to get rid of coronavirus in humans, he recommended malaria drugs to do the trick. But it was reported that these caused more deaths than recovery. Never mind, Trump is the President and he is all knowledgeable even without any medical qualifications.

Trump has always sought to create his own ‘facts’. Even after all his gaffes, Trump reportedly has a solid electoral base of 35 percent, believed to be 80 per cent among Republican voters. He is Mr America, come to make the country great again.

Lately though, because of the COVID-19 crisis, which has hit the United States the most with the largest number of infections and fatalities, Trump’s position might become shaky. He would like to brush aside the health crisis by opening up the country’s economy, like his counterpart in Brazil is carrying on. But the United States hasn’t yet reached completely Brazil’s level-even there the provinces have defied the president with their respective lockdowns. If Trump has his way, he would simply abolish the country’s constitution and rule by decree. But that is not an option yet and he has to face another election in November. And COVID-19 is proving an obstacle and terrible nuisance.

If Trump has his way, he would simply abolish the country’s constitution and rule by decree

Therefore, what does he do? He creates distractions, some of which are clearly dangerous. We know that during and after the last presidential election, he sought to kick up the issue of Mexican migrants. He said he would build a big wall and that the Mexican government would foot the bill. His rhetoric of making the Mexican government pay for it hasn’t materialized nor the kind of wall he envisaged; but this has put fear and brought misery to those escaping unlivable lives, largely due to the governing structures created and sustained by the US’ overarching control of these societies.

Their economies, if they functioned at all, were subsidiary to the big guy (the US), which decided what might work or not through the agency of dictatorships foisted on them from time to time. And when a revolution in Cuba overthrew the dictatorship in that country, Cuba is still paying the price for going its own way with, probably, the longest boycott of a country in the world.

But anti-migration sentiments are strong among the kind of people Trump is courting to win the election – the uneducated whites blaming their economic hardships on imagined threats from non-whites of all descriptions out to take control of the ‘greatest’ (as Trump would put it) country in the world. And he would rake it up again, as it is a live issue.

But coming back to the COVID-19 pandemic and its human and economic cost, Trump is now blaming China for it. He believes that it originated from a government virology lab in Wuhan, causing even greater havoc to the US than the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese navy, which brought the US into WW11.

The problem, though, is that the US has no hard evidence to support this thesis, for which its own intelligence agencies and its Five Eyes intelligence partners (US, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand) do not seem to have any hard evidence. By most accounts, the virus originated from the ‘wet’ market in Wuhan from selling and killing of wild animals and transference to humans.

And this remains a matter of concern because the earlier SARS epidemic in 2003 had similar origin from a wet market, but luckily it was contained without becoming the monster virus COVID-19. May be, there is need to investigate this and related aspects of the pandemic. But Trump believes in creating his own ‘facts’ that might help him in the November presidential election.

The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia