By: Jamison Parkgilder
There was a time when disease and pestilence were blamed on the Devil. They still are – only now the Devil is named Donald J. Trump.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who ignited laughter when he tried for the presidency, said this week he is unsatisfied with the president’s handling of the Coronavirus outbreak.
Rather than advance possible solutions, the failed candidate who runs this city railed at President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in his weekly radio segment.
“This is really getting ridiculous,” de Blasio insisted. “In a crisis, you actually have to improvise and create and decentralize, and they’re not doing it. And this is going from a disorganized mess to a failure very, very quickly.”
“This is not political. This is just about actual management and leadership,” de Blasio said with a straight face. “Donald Trump and Mike Pence can’t organize two for lunch. I mean, this is unbelievable.”
New York City officials are still waiting to hear from federal officials about another Big Apple resident is, in fact, infected with the Coronavirus.
The mayor’s Democratic colleagues have been vocal in playing up the potential damage to both people and the economy in the hopes of using them against Trump in the upcoming election. Democrats, of course, have denied it, also with straight faces. Vice President Mike Pence, however, was having none of it during an appearance on NBC News’ Meet the Press. “When you see voices on our side pushing back on outrageous and irresponsible rhetoric on the other side, I think that’s important, and I think it’s justified,” he said in response to questions about remarks from Donald Trump Jr. and others.
Pence, of course, was right. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh said days ago, “It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump.” The president himself said at a South Carolina rally that the coronavirus was the Democrats’ “new hoax” to use against him.
Indeed, health officials themselves have heaped praise on the president for his handling of the outbreak. In comments from the White House days ago, Trump said that the U.S. has “closed up our borders to flights coming in from certain areas, areas that were hit by the coronavirus and hit pretty hard. And we did it very early. A lot of people thought we shouldn’t have done it that early, and we did, and it turned out to be a very good thing. And the number one priority from our standpoint is the health and safety of the American people. And that’s the way I viewed it when I made that decision. Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low. We have the greatest experts in the world — really, in the world, right here — people that are called upon by other countries when things like this happen.”
