Trump obsessed with his own grudges during national emergency

As of Monday, it has been one month since Donald Trump declared a national emergency and falsely promised an aggressive response to the COVID-19 pandemic with widespread testing and online screenings. But rather than address these broken promises, Trump spent the weekend trying to change the subject.

Trump said in late February that the number of coronavirus cases in the United States would soon be “down close to zero.” As of Sunday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports more than 525,000 total confirmed or presumptive positive tests in the United States and more than 20,000 deaths.

Instead of owning up to his failed response, Trump has tried to pass the buck with tweets, focusing on some of his favorite enemies in the process.

Pushing a fake cure

Trump continues to claim without evidence that a malaria medication will cure COVID-19, even as research trials suggest it is not worth the risk. On Sunday, the New York Times reported a study in Brazil was abandoned for safety reasons after patients developed cardiovascular problems.

Still, Trump retweeted a pro-Trump account on that day claiming that the “Democrat Party leaders are fighting hard for Iran and Illegals to get money” while “fighting just as hard to keep you from getting HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE.”

Promoting Republican candidates

Trump retweeted a Republican activist’s tweets highlighting the Democratic-held Virginia 2nd and Georgia 6th congressional districts as “flippable” in the 2020 elections. Trump claimed earlier this month that it was “not the time for politics.”

Complaining about the Russia investigation (still)

It has been nearly a year since Robert Mueller’s report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election was released. But though Trump called the report a “complete and total exoneration,” he has not moved on. On Sunday, he retweeted multiple conspiracy claims about the investigation’s origins from far-right outlets.

Complaining about impeachment (still)

More than two months after the GOP-controlled Senate acquitted Trump of charges of abuse of power and obstruction, Trump tweeted on Sunday that one of his top supporters thinks “Congress was too distracted by the (phony) Impeachment Witch Hunt when they should have been investigating CoronaVirus when it first appeared in China.”

Republicans have falsely claimed impeachment was to blame for the slow pandemic response, ignoring the fact that Trump was still downplaying the threat of the virus days after his acquittal.

Attacking the media

Trump insulted Fox News host Chris Wallace and NBC News host Chuck Todd on Sunday afternoon. “Just watched Mike Wallace wannabe, Chris Wallace, on @FoxNews. I am now convinced that he is even worse than Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of Meet the Press(please!), or the people over at Deface the Nation,” he tweeted.

On Sunday evening, he claimed that the New York Times was “fake” and attacked what he called “corruption and dishonesty in the Lamestream Media.”

Making energy more expensive

On Sunday and Monday, Trump cheered a deal by oil-producing countries to sell less oil to the world, in an effort to drive up energy prices as the economy struggles with the pandemic. Bloomberg called him “the first American president to push for higher oil prices in more than 30 years.”

Trump praised “President Putin of Russia and King Salman of Saudi Arabia” for the deal and predicted it would “save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States.”

On Sunday, Trump shared a “Presidential Message” for Easter, celebrating “love, compassion, and kindness.” He also boasted that “there is a fully signed Presidential Disaster Declaration for all 50 States,” tweeting, “We are winning, and will win, the war on the Invisible Enemy!”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.