Trump in panic mode

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22 Million Jobless – Desperate Trump Blames China & Declares Worst Is Over, Despite Coronavirus Deaths Hit New Record.

The U.S. recorded its first Coronavirus fatality on February 29. Approximately 38 days later, the death toll breached 10,000. Astonishingly, it took just another 9 days for the 10,000 fatalities to triple to 30,000. And the country has been smashing one record after another to emerge the champion for the wrong reason. That makes President Donald Trump extremely terrified.

With the world hitting more than 2-million Covid-19 cases and 142,716 deaths, the United States continues dominating the chart – 654,343 cases – leaving Spain, Italy, France, Germany, UK and of course, China, in the dust. On Tuesday (Apr 14), the U.S. hit its highest death toll in a single day – 2,364. By Wednesday, the death toll hit another record – 2,371 to top 30,800.

In actual fact, nobody knows the precise figures of confirmed cases and deaths due to under-counting. What is certain is that New York City, the epicentre of the pandemic in America, has more than 10,000 deaths. Even the city’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, admitted that the official death toll was probably too low because many people who died at home were not included.





But President Donald Trump wasn’t interested in the death toll. He has a bigger fish to fry – stock market, economy and jobs. About 20 governors believed that with few Covid-19 cases under their territories, they may be ready to reopen for business. That has emboldened the president to float the idea of restarting the economy on May 1, despite the nation hitting new records of deaths.

So on Wednesday, President Trump unilaterally declared that the United States of America had passed the peak of the pandemic – and that some states would reopen even before his own proposed May 1 deadline. He said – “While we must remain vigilant, it is clear that our strategy is working, and very strongly working. New cases are declining throughout the New York metropolitan area.”

But when the president was asked for proof or evidence that the worst was over, he said his administration’s Coronavirus Task Force was “looking at graphs and models.” However, New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo was not impressed, saying he would refuse any order by the U.S. president to reopen the economy too soon, prompting Trump to label him as one of the “mutineers”.





It’s not that hard to understand why President Donald Trump, a Republican running for re-election in November, is desperate to reopen the nation’s economy. Last week, about 5-million people have filed for unemployment claims for the first time. That brings to total 22-million jobless Americans – in 1-month – across the country.

With 200 days to go before Election Day, Trump is not taking any chances, even though it’s not easy for the Democrats to defeat him, a sitting president. Thanks to what appears to be his complacency in not treating the Coronavirus outbreak seriously in its early days, recent polls suggest that former Vice President Joe Biden could turn the tables on Trump in states like Florida and Arizona.

According to the RealClearPolitics polling data, not only Biden leads Trump in swing states like Florida and Arizona, the result of national polls also indicates the president might lose in states such as Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Therefore, by hook or by crook, Donald Trump absolutely cannot allow the Coronavirus crisis to turn into a full-blown recession.





Riding on a strong economy into re-election has always – and the only way – for Trump. Having anticipated that the Democrats will argue that fewer Americans would have died if Trump had taken a more pro-active and quicker action before the pandemic spread to the current stage, Trump trumpeted that U.S. deaths from the Coronavirus are far lower than some estimation.

Already, Trump has started taking the easy way out by blaming China for all the problems the pandemic has created, including his incompetency and complacency. Not satisfied with calling the Coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus”, the president now says his government will investigate whether the virus came from a laboratory in China despite the lack of evidence.

Amusingly, a day earlier (Tuesday), top US general Mark Milley has raised his doubt on the similar issue, saying American intelligence suggested the Coronavirus was likely to have occurred naturally instead of being manufactured in a laboratory. Besides China, Trump has also deflected attention to the WHO – and cut US$400 million funding to the World Health Organization.





The U.S. president has accused the WHO of promoting Chinese “disinformation” about the virus. Earlier, Trump had accused Beijing of not telling him earlier what was happening so that he could prepare earlier. And now his administration has basically accused the WHO of having its role in helping China to cover up the Coronavirus outbreak.

Yet, as early as January 22, as the nation saw the first American diagnosed with Covid-19 after returning from China, Trump confidently told CNBC – “We have it under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.” Hours before the WHO declared the outbreak a global emergency, the president assured the people that the virus would have “a very good ending for us.”

Heck, at a press conference on Feb 10, the U.S. president even suggested that the highly infectious disease would simply “go away” in April, as temperatures warm. Three days later, the virus would infect more than 46,000 Americans and killed at least 1,116. Still, for the entire month of February, Trump, like a broken record, had repeated almost the same tune – the Coronavirus was very much under control.





Interestingly, an unclassified briefing document on the Coronavirus has been revealed by the U.S. military showing that as early as Feb 3, the United States Army had warned the White House that the pathogen could kill at least 150,000 Americans. The document – “Black Swan” analysis – which was prepared on Feb 3 had projected that between 80,000 and 150,000 people could die.

Even if the Chinese had covered up, which the U.S. cannot prove, can you blame them? Exactly why the U.S. president was foolish enough to trust the Communist Party of China? Perhaps Trump should explain why he had praised and hailed China and President Xi Jinping – at least 15 times since Jan 22 to Feb 29 – for its great work and transparency in fighting Coronavirus.

In the same breath, perhaps the Trump administration should explain why scientists of the University of Cambridge in the UK together with researchers from Germany had discovered that Americans who had lived in Wuhan had “type-A” of Covid-19, the root of the outbreak, but most of the Chinese infected in Wuhan had the “type-B”, which can’t exist without type “A”.