Editor’s Note: Say What? is the segment of Liberty Nation Radio where we unveil some of the most wacky, astonishing, and damnable things uttered by politicians and the chattering class.
Tim Donner: This week, it's all about the president and the man who would be president, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. How Trump is handling the crisis, how the likely Democratic presidential nominee is reacting, and what he says he'd do differently. We see in the president someone who struggled to find his footing early on in this crisis, started to gain his footing over the last week or ten days, and now is all but returning to his familiar style of presentation, shall we say.
Appearing day after day before a national audience, Trump has been boxed into the type of formal presentations which have not traditionally been in his wheelhouse, but when he joined a virtual townhall on Fox News, he let his guard down a bit and discussed what is now coming to the fore as the biggest issue in all this: how Americans are getting restless to say the least about the economy.
President Trump: Our country is not built to shut down. Our people are full of vigor and energy. They don't want to be locked into a house or an apartment or some space. It's not for our country. We're not built that way. And I said, you know, I don't want the cure to be worse than the problem itself. The problem being obviously the problem. You can destroy a country this way by closing it down where it literally goes from being the most prosperous ... I mean, we had the best economy in the history of our country three weeks ago and then all of a sudden we're supposed to shut it down. And then, we're supposed to pay people not to go to work. We never had that. We used to pay people to go to work.
Tim: So you can hear the pressure building on Trump, from himself and others, to loosen the grip of this national social distancing and shutdown of so many places and things. The president accentuated his apparent leaning toward loosening restrictions in the coming days by adding that, up to now, the Coronavirus has actually been less devastating than the flus which strike the nation every winter.
Trump: We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu. We don't turn the country off. You know, we average 37,000 people a year. Can you believe that? And actually, this year we're having a bad flu season … We lose much more than that to automobile accidents. We didn't call up the automobile companies to stop making cars.
Tim: And President Trump is now apparently comfortable enough in handling this crisis that he's starting to return to his old ways, rightfully crediting himself for what may well be seen in retrospect as the single most important decision he made, while ridiculing his opponent.
Trump: I made a decision to close off to China. That was weeks early, and, honestly, I took a lot of heat. Sleepy Joe Biden said it's xenophobic. I don't know if he knows what that means, but that's okay. He said it's racist what I did. Thousands and thousands of more people, probably tens of thousands, would be dead right now if I didn't make that decision. And I must say doctors, nobody wanted to make that decision at the time. It was very, very early. Call it luck or call it talent. It doesn't matter. We made a great decision.
Tim: Indeed, the ban on travel from China will likely be seen in the rear-view mirror as vital to stopping a massive spread of COVID-19. On the other hand, he might've shut down travel from Europe earlier, but at this point, the hindsight of everyone outside the White House is 2020 and that would, of course, include the man hoping to unseat the president this November, Joe Biden. He's isolated himself at his home but has done a number of media interviews, all with the same theme, that Trump, whom the left attacked for being absent as the crisis hit, is now talking too much ... and failing.
Joe Biden: He should stop talking and start to listen to the medical experts. You talk about having an economic crisis. You want an economic crisis? Watch this spike. Watch the number of dead go up. Watch the number of people who in fact connect with this virus. When are you going to be able to open the economy? Look, we all want the economy to open as rapidly as possible. The way to do that is let's take care of the medical side of this immediately. One of the things, he's not responsible for the Coronavirus, but he's responsible for the delay in taking the actions that need to be taken, as far back as January. And I find it incredible … Look, this is ridiculous … He says he's a wartime president. Well, act like one.
Tim: So the president should just shut up, let the nation wonder what he's doing. He coulda, woulda, shoulda, and Joe Biden ... Yes, Joe Biden ... could handle things much better. But I'm personally relieved to hear the former vice president put my mind at ease by admitting Donald Trump did not cause the virus. Who knew?!?
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Read more from Tim Donner.
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All About Coronavirus
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Middle School: Trump Takes Action on Coronavirus
Elementary School: Trump Versus Coronavirus
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