However publicly, Trump lied.
He lied on the gathering of the world’s elite in Davos, Switzerland on January 22, saying, “It’s one particular person coming in from China. We’ve got it beneath management. It’s going to be simply positive.” He lied days later in Michigan, declaring that “the whole lot’s going to be nice” and falsely claiming, “We just about shut it down coming in from China.” He later stated the virus was going to have “an excellent ending for it.” And with a watch towards Wall Road, he lied to the entrepreneurs in India, declaring “so far as what we’re doing with the brand new virus, I feel that we’re doing an important job.”
However the markets fell once more that day Trump spoke in New Delhi, creating their greatest two-day slide in 4 years, and issues had been about to worsen. None of Trump’s magic phrases would forestall the Dow from shedding 37 p.c of its worth from February to March, stunning the market when it dropped virtually 3,000 factors on March 16 — its worst single-day plummet in historical past.
These ultimate days of February 2020 set the tone for the remainder of Trump’s horrible yr. Joe Biden’s turnaround on Tremendous Tuesday in early March robbed him of his socialist foil, Bernie Sanders. Days later, Trump’s shaky Oval Workplace tackle on the coronavirus did little to reassure a jittery nation. His blustery social media posts didn’t transfer the needle both — the virus, in spite of everything, didn’t have a Twitter account. And within the coming months, the racial reckoning following the demise of George Floyd would underscore simply how out of contact Trump was with Black People.
Over the summer season, the president who had equivocated concerning the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., discovered himself in a bunker beneath the manager mansion when a small hearth ignited at close by St. John’s Episcopal Church throughout protests in Lafayette Park. When the bunker transfer leaked to the press, Trump exploded with anger for worry that it made him look weak. He horrified a lot of the nation by utilizing the navy and federal police to clear nonviolent demonstrators from the park, posing for a clumsy photo-op in entrance of the broken church, bible in hand.
By October, Trump’s lies about COVID caught up with him when he was hospitalized, in poor health with a probably lethal illness after almost a yr of flouting the foundations, believing that sporting a masks would, as he informed aides, make him seem like “a pussy.”
After he was discharged from Walter Reed, and with the lighting simply so, Trump strode up the steps to the Truman Balcony. Although nonetheless extremely contagious, he tore off his masks earlier than stepping inside. Reporters on the garden, although, observed one thing odd: Trump instantly backtracked out to the balcony once more earlier than returning inside, as if recreating his entrance. And that’s what he did: He was utilizing the second to movie a video marking his so-called conquer COVID.
“Don’t be afraid of COVID. Don’t let it dominate your life,” Trump stated.
