March 23, 2020By Matthew Chapman
On Monday, writing for the Washington Post, columnist Philip Bump noted that President Donald Trump has a mentality of apathy and sarcasm towards the misfortune of his political rivals — even when people are facing economic devastation or mortal danger.
“The president has a history of continuing to bash those who take key votes against him — like former Arizona senator John McCain — but one would be forgiven for assuming that Romney’s decision to follow government recommendations to isolate in order to avoiding spreading the dangerous virus would not be a jumping-off point for a presidential attack,” wrote Bump. “But this is Trump. So, after a beat, he asked a question. ‘Romney’s in isolation?’ Trump said, interrupting the reporter. Then, with apparent sarcasm, he continued: ‘Gee, that’s too bad. Go ahead.'”
“By now, we’ve learned how this works: Trump says something that accurately captures his feeling but couches it in enough murkiness to stymie efforts at categorizing it,” wrote Bump. “His base adores it and understands that he was saying what he meant, but objective observers are kept at bay with insistences that they are overreacting or misinterpreting what happened. I say he used “apparent sarcasm,” but no Trump supporter who shares Trump’s view of Romney was under any misapprehension about how the president actually feels about the Utah senator’s potential exposure to the virus.”
Bump noted that the president has also attacked the states of New York and Illinois, whose governors have been critical of him, for their own coronavirus situations. And nor is that where it began.
“Trump had been on the job for about seven months when Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico,” wrote Bump. “It had been a tense summer, with a white nationalist protest in Virginia at which a counterprotester was killed. Trump’s equivocations on the event met with broad condemnation. The three hurricanes that hit in rapid succession shortly afterward gave Trump a chance to reset, to adopt the trappings of the White House in visiting the areas damaged by the storms. It was a chance to use the presidency as a way offset a moment of difficult politics, and Trump seized it in embracing aid to the Gulf Coast after hurricanes Harvey and Irma.”
“When Maria his Puerto Rico, his attitude was noticeably different,” continued Bump. “His expressions of concern for the island were heavily dampened by vocal concern for how it had been managed and the money it owed to big banks. He fought off criticism that he wasn’t as focused on helping the island recover as he had been on aiding Texas and Florida — two states that helped him win the White House in 2016 — and picked fights with Puerto Rican political leaders.”
“On Feb. 13, there were about a dozen known coronavirus cases in the United States, but it was already spreading in the wild in the Pacific Northwest,” wrote Bump. “Frustrated with New York immigration laws, Trump had locked state residents out of a federal program meant to speed international travel. Cuomo was scheduled to visit the White House to discuss the freeze, but Trump offered some apparent preconditions on Twitter. One was that the state should stop investigating Trump and seeking his tax returns.”
“Oh, your trusted traveler program was canceled Andrew Cuomo? Gee, that’s too bad. Oh, your hospitals are strained, Illinois and New York? Gee, that’s a tough one. When it comes to his opponents and critics, empathy is in short supply,” concluded Bump. “Trump couldn’t help himself in offering that seeming sarcasm at Mitt Romney’s expense. But it was not the first time he’d expressed such a sentiment about someone with whom he disagreed politically — and not the first time that settling a score was mixed into his approach to addressing a crisis.”
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