Sean Hannity’s latest effort to portray President Trump as a heroic and decisive leader throughout the coronavirus crisis belongs in a time capsule. It will aid future study of one of the most monumental and destructive leadership failures in modern times — and the extraordinary lengths to which Trump’s propagandists are going to rewrite it as a spectacular triumph.
Hannity displayed what this will look like with his broadcast on Tuesday night. Hannity and Trump talked about Trump’s decision to restrict travel from China as if it were a singularly decisive move. (This is an absurd exaggeration, but put that aside for now.)
Importantly, during that banter — which also featured them bashing the media for refusing to recognize Trump’s brilliant leadership — Hannity scrolled a timeline of major actions by the government all throughout this crisis.
But it’s nonsense. What Hannity doesn’t tell you is that in many of the cases he himself cited, Trump directly resisted those efforts, publicly undercut them, or privately raged over them for the most nakedly corrupt of reasons.
But Hannity doesn’t tell you that Trump repeatedly and explicitly undercutthe CDC’s efforts to create a sense of public urgency about the threat.
For instance, CDC officials had to actively work to reverse Trump’s downplaying of coronavirus. In February, after Trump claimed coronavirus would “miraculously” go away in the spring, CDC Director Robert Redfield contradicted Trump, noting it would remain “beyond this year.”
Trump also actively contradicted CDC officials himself. After one declared it’s a “question of exactly when” coronavirus will spread, Trump disputed this, claiming: “I don’t think it’s inevitable.”
Trump even privately raged about the CDC’s public warnings because they were spooking the markets, which Trump views as key to his reelection chances.
What Hannity doesn’t tell you is that the internal dynamics involving both Azar and Pence actually showcased Trump’s refusal to treat coronavirus urgently — in a particularly vivid way.
For instance, Azar tried to warn Trump to take coronavirus seriously as early as mid-January, but Trump’s aides “mocked and belittled Azar as alarmist” for doing so.
Trump’s appointment of Pence was actually part of an effort to marginalize the prescient Azar. And it came late. Until Pence was appointed, no White House official had been in charge of the response to coronavirus “until nearly two months after it began.”
But it doesn’t tell you that Trump subsequently moved to relax guidelines in defiance of urgent warnings from experts or that Trump only backed down and extended guidelines after truly dire projections, TV imagery of mounting corpses and warnings that a future death spike could damage his reelection chances cut through his haze of willful denial.