Three weeks into Coronageddon and I’m starting to wonder if President Trump has a coronavirus. Not the invisible one that causes the deadly COVID-19, but a very visible one that hides in plain sight.
In the form of Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Hear me out. To begin with the longtime director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and, since January, a member of the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force, does not appear to be a big fan of the president’s. Three weeks ago the man CNN called “the expert of all experts” on COVID19 famously did a face palm and appeared to roll his eyes when the president used the phrase “Deep State Department” – this while standing behind him at a press conference for all the cameras to see. That kind of body language earns lesser-titled subordinates their walking papers. A few days ago, after the president declined to exercise the authoritarian impulse we’re told so much about and refused to issue a national stay-at-home order, Dr. Fauci was incredulous about that decision. While being interviewed on CNN.
Agree on the merits or not, that kind of public second guessing is walking paper stuff.
Which brings me to my next point. For all intents and purposes, the man that Mother Jones proclaimed “the perfect man for this moment” is the most powerful man in America. At a time where the mainstream media demands that the White House listen to “experts” and “scientists” he is subordinate to the leader of the free world in title only. If Fauci says zig and Mr. Trump zags, it’s more kindling for the “Trump versus Science” video fire. That won’t play well in November.
The ‘expert of experts’ on coronavirus may bring Trump down without the need for years-long investigations or impeachment hearings.
All this is important because the man who’s been at the helm of the NIAID since 1984 is setting the bar exceedingly — if not unattainably — high for the reopening of America. On Friday ABCNews.com reported he was concerned that the virus may “resurge,” and that to ensure it doesn’t we need “the ability to test, to identify, to isolate and to do contact tracing” in place. That last part – contact tracing – may be doable in South Korea. But it’s nowhere in the foreseeable horizon in the United States, at least where, as here, the pandemic is already widespread.
All of this puts the president in a bind, and if he’s unable to wiggle out of it he may lose his presidency and the America people our country as we know it. If the president reopens the country through a Fauci stop sign, he risks getting tee boned. The Trump-blaming media, it of short and selective memory, will lay every death thereafter at his doorstep. The Trump v. Science sail may catch enough wind to carry Joe Biden into the White House. If President Obama’s VP is as feeble as he appears these days, we’ll be looking at another new president in short order, about whom all we know now is that she’ll be a woman – presumably either Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who’s been on the job all of ten months; or Hillary Clinton, who the American people rejected only three years ago.
If Trump keeps the country shut down until we have just the right laboratory conditions to satisfy Dr. Fauci, on the other hand, we’ll be in a full-blown depression that no amount of $1200 checks and multi-trillion dollar rescue packages can cure. Bankrupt Americans will almost certainly vote President Trump out in November, and the stage will be set for whatever Democrat’s in the White House to — borrowing an Obama phrase here — “radically transform” America. Since it can all be done under the auspice of “an emergency,” he or she won’t need the almost-certainly-very-blue-anyway Congress’s support to do it. And once the coronavirus is “under control” — guessing the third week of November or so — there may be another “urgent” emergency just around the corner: climate change.
None of this is to say there’s some grand conspiracy at play. While I’ve often wondered what happened three Thursdays ago that caused so many governors to shut their states down on a dime, I’m guessing it wasn’t a bunch of Trump-hating pols in a smoke-filled room. Nor do I have reason to believe that Dr. Fauci is purposefully trying to irreparably wreck the country to affect political change other Beltway insiders have heretofore been unable to pull off. Fauci reportedly supported Clinton for president in 2016, but that is hardly in and of itself evidence of Strzok-like bad faith.
President Trump isn’t without cards to play. Dr. Deborah Birx, Fauci’s co-hort, has been more publicly supportive of President Trump than Fauci and presumably can be counted on to have 45’s back when he says this isn’t just a public health problem. If Mr. Trump decides to form an official White House panel to re-open the economy, he should be able to shift the optics from this being a health crisis only to a health-and-economy one. And if the economy doesn’t rebound with alacrity, he may be able to shift some of the blame to Democrat governors who refuse to re-open their states despite Trump’s green light.
All of this is to suggest that there’s much at stake for all of us in the weeks ahead. For Mr. Trump, the actual coronavirus may not be his most serious enemy. Malicious or not, Dr. Fauci presents every bit the threat to his presidency that Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, etc. do. Mr. Trump won’t be the only big loser is he’s unable to finesse his way around around him.
