Week 179 - Absolute Authority - a podcast by Amy Siskind

This week Trump threw a series of shiny coins to  distract from the growing death toll and his mishandling of the  coronavirus response. On Monday, he proclaimed he, not the governors,  had “absolute authority” to reopen the country; on Tuesday he halted  funding to the World Health Organization in the midst of a global  pandemic; on Wednesday he threatened to adjourn Congress to make recess  appointments; on Thursday he announced his plan to reopen the economy to  much ballyhoo and which wasn’t actually a plan; and on Friday he  encouraged protestors with tweets to “liberate” states from lockdown  orders. Each item was remarkable on its own, and the media spent their  days dissecting the legality of the pronouncements and whether they were  presidential, as the death toll surpassed live lost in three years of  the Korean War and kept going.

As the week came to an end, the United States  accounted for nearly 1 in 3 worldwide coronavirus cases, and nearly 1 in  4 deaths. The U.S. is just 4.2% of the world’s population. It became  increasingly clear that months of inaction, lies, and disinformation had  turned a country which up through the Obama administration had been a  leader in preventing global pandemics, into the epicenter of infection,  death, and dysfunctionality.

As the U.S.counted 2,000 or more deaths per day,  with no slow down in sight, Trump, Fox News, and conservative  commentators minimized the import with various whataboutisms, and  not-so-subtly pushed for the country to reopen. Not that the country was  ready — it was definitely not according to public health experts.  Rather Trump was singularly focused on getting re-elected, which  required an economic upturn, as 22 million Americans filed for  unemployment — even if that meant inciting insurrection.

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