In the middle of a pandemic during election season, one would think staying proactive and outspoken would benefit a candidates race. However, just the opposite is occuring. Democratic candidate Joe Biden has been seemingly moving out of the spotlight to give room for President Donald Trump to demolish his own campaign.
In fact, the most recent news relating to Biden was when Senator Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race. Biden has been staying quiet in isolation while President Trump has only made his chances of being reelected worse.
President Trump is being very vocal on his opinions regarding the coronavirus in his briefings, especially when he was originally counting on his tour circuit and rallies to reel his voters in. However, Trump is going against his initial decision of deputizing Vice President Mike Pence to lead the pandemic response. Trump wants to be in control and find a way to prove to his citizens that he is a good leader and can fix this.
But people tend to blame the leader when things go south, and Trump is trying to put a band-aid on the problem.
Every one of Trump’s public attempts to cure the virus himself has led to more chaos.
The President had a rough start at one of his press briefings when he nicknamed the coronavirus the “chinese virus”. His comment triggered many citizens to speak up about his uneducated and offensive comment as there is a lack of evidence linking the initial location of the virus to China.
In desperate need of a cure, Trump contacted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a drug called hydroxychloroquine. This is an anti-malaria drug that India has been using to treat COVID patients, but there is not sufficient evidence it works. On the same day, Modi decided to ban the export of the drug from India, which angered Trump.
In fact, senior Eesha Lawande is frustrated with President Trump’s recent words and actions. “It is obvious that Trump wants to cure the entire country with money, but unfortunately the virus doesn’t work like that. I just think he needs to be more aware of the impacts of his words and choices as a leader for this country,” she says.
The real issue is that President Trump is continuously getting the hopes of citizens up, therefore misinforming the public about the Coronavirus. He is trying to place blame on others to avoid the same upon himself. Whether it is upon China or India, he is keen on making it seem as if these countries are the enemy, when in fact, the world should be working together. Placing blame on China has only led to increased violence on Chinese Americans. Placing blame on India is only making the public enemize India for banning exportation of a drug that would not work anyways.
Trump’s most recent attempt to find a cure has garnered the most attention yet. “I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute,” Trump says during a coronavirus press briefing. “And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets inside the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”
His extremely uneducated public question of whether or not putting disinfectant into the body would cure the virus prompted disinfectant companies like Lysol to make announcements urging consumers not to drink cleaning products. Although Trump claims the remark was sarcastic, the tone of his voice in question was as genuine as can be, especially in the means of announcing it to the entire country.
Without the tour circuit and rallies, Trump’s numbers were already bound to decrease. He was counting on the press briefings to make up for his rallies, but his responses and words at the daily White House briefings are forcing some voters to turn against him, in favor of Biden. In fact, he is no longer attending press briefings due to the backlash and instead has a representative attending them in his place. Unless Trump can get his act together and educate himself thoroughly on the subject before answering questions, there is little hope for a turnaround.
