With each passing day, you can’t help but to ask yourself if this is the day that US president Donald Trump finally realises that how badly he’s screwed up America. Well, today is not that day. Instead of finally acknowledging that the pandemic is bad or choosing to be an example for millions of Americans by wearing a mask, Trump has resorted to calling out his own administration.
The US president started the week by disagreeing with the only dude who seems to have any sense in his coronavirus task force, Dr. Anthony Fauci, on the severity of the virus. Fauci, who only happens to be the nation’s premier infectious disease specialist, said on Tuesday that “The current state [of the virus spread] is really not good,” and that “We are still knee deep in the first wave” of Covid-19 infections.”
Trump on the other hand, begs to differ. When asked about his thoughts on Fauci’s assessment, Trump said “I disagree with him.” He added that “I think we are in a good place,” and that “We’ve done a good job. I think we are going to be in two, three, four weeks … I think we are going to be in very good shape.”
Yup. Trump believes that everything’s going to be okay in a month tops.
Besides publicly disagreeing with a core member of his coronavirus task force, Trump took to Twitter (where else, right?) to threaten the CDC on school reopening guidelines with budget cuts, citing that Germany, Denmark, Norway and Sweden have already opened schools with no problems.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1280853299600789505
Seeing as those countries don’t have anywhere near as many coronavirus cases as the US, I’d say it’s an unfair comparison. Of course, Trump’s administration has been trying to convince schools that there’s more of a risk not opening schools than there are reopening them for weeks now.
That being said though, Trump threatening defunding is not exactly as bad of a threat as it sounds, given that most of the school funding in America comes from states and municipalities, and not from the federal government. Still though, with a new coronavirus relief bill in the works (in which he has control over), Trump will definitely make schools feel the pain there.
At this point, Trump was still not done. He then tweeted again and this time he called out the health guidelines set by his own administration. Oh, the irony.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1280857657365200902
As you’d expect, state governors were not happy about Trump’s attack on the CDC. Everyone’s favourite governor at the moment, Andrew Cuomo, full on dismissed the authority Trump has when it comes to forcing the reopening of schools.
This has been there, done that. School reopenings are state decisions. Period,”
“That is the law. That is the way we’re going to proceed. It’s not up to the president of the United States.” he added. This whole situation is ironic also because governors have been repeating for months that in order to safely reopen schools in September, more federal funding is going to be needed. So Trump threatening to revoke funding is really just counterproductive.
The US has seen more than 3.1 million Americans infected with the coronavirus, with 134,347 people dying.
