First, everything was going well until the pandemic.
No, this is not true. It was maybe going well for some people, and going much much worse for others. Trump spent three straight years rolling back climate + economic regulations and restricting civil rights for immigrants and trans people. He also eroded countless norms that would pay off in a second term, especially in the Justice Department.
If Trump loses this presidency, it is absolutely crucial that we take a critical look at what he accomplished. When he’s President it’s hard to sit back and think about everything he’s done because you’re always trying to catch up to his latest fuck-up. A period without him as President would allow us to evaluate what he actually did in context.
But it’s hard to say he did anything good in his reaction to COVID specifically.
I understand that he did not literally murder 230,000 people, and that a large amount of people were always going to die in the US no matter what happened. But it did not have to be like this.
Based on your analogy with refugees (ironic, considering Trump’s views on actual refugees) I’m assuming you’re talking about his delay in closing travel from China and continuing to let in some foreign nationals.
Way too much of the conversation around COVID has revolved around travel bans. This is honestly not even close to being the biggest issue. COVID was a true worldwide pandemic, with the US being the travel hub it is, it was always going to make its way here. But we need to focus on what happened once it got here.
First off, the Trump Admin did not commit to proper testing and tracing. Tracing can be difficult, but testing? There’s absolutely no excuse for a lack of testing. Trump has mentioned multiple times that we need FEWER tests so our numbers drop. That’s INSANE! It’s an insane thing for anyone to say, let alone a President.
We missed the initial outbreak altogether because the Trump admin dragged their feet on testing. In March, my father had a severe cough, a high fever, and no sense of taste or smell. He couldn’t get a test because he hadn’t traveled abroad or come into contact with anyone who tested positive. His coworkers couldn’t get tests either. Again, that is CRAZY, unprecedented in the first world. Thank god he recovered, but to this day we still don’t know if he had COVID or not.
Then, Trump refused to immediately invoke the Defense Production Act to make PPE and ventilators. He called on states to buy their own PPE, triggering a bidding war driving up state government budgets. This makes absolutely no fucking sense unless you’re purposefully antagonizing and punishing certain states that didn’t vote for you. Which is what Trump did.
Then there’s the insufficient ECONOMIC relief. A fucking $1200 check and extended UI benefits that ran out while the pandemic was still raging. Pitiful. Had Trump embraced more relief for individuals + small businesses, it would’ve happened 100% considering how the GOP follows him. But no, the Dems wanted more relief, and owning the libs apparently mattered more than leadership or generosity.
Now onto messaging; yes, the CDC fucked up in their initial messaging on masks. But they corrected it shortly after, and you know who didn’t follow suit? Fucking Trump! He said he probably wouldn’t wear a mask, implied you didn’t really need it, didn’t even wear one until July, and in doing so he politicized virus prevention.
Yes, the CDC messaging was fucked. But they didn’t turn masks into a Republican vs Democrat issue. Trump did.
Take a step back and consider how fucked that is. That a basic, easy, cheap health measure is somehow a Democrat thing.
And yes, Cuomo fucked up too. Democrats and Republicans can fuck up. But Cuomo is not President, and it’s hard to find a single parallel in the first world that had a more disastrous COVID response than Trump. I can’t name ONE thing we did better than literally any comparable country.