Oforget what I said. For more than a month, everything was " under control " and the coronavirus would disappear " like a miracle ", Most likely in early April.
The President of the United States has not been the only Western leader to have reacted slowly to the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic, but he is probably the one who has camped the longest in denial. This yesterday is over. Donald Trump is now on the front line, under machine gun fire, at the front, omnipresent in the endless daily press conferences devoted to the crisis. "I am a wartime president", he claimed on March 18. General mobilization, sacred union, the commander-in-chief never ceases to challenge "The invisible enemy".
Have the casual weeks only existed? "I always knew it was a pandemic. I felt it long before it was called a pandemic ", he said the same day. The president also believes that he did "Great job from the start". Asked to rate his performance, he gave himself a " ten out of ten " March 16. No one was surprised. Donald Trump always finds Trump Donald excellent.
From now on, all good wills are celebrated. The President of the United States manages to speak positively of the Democrats, even if he clearly has still not managed to speak directly to the speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, to stall a plan to support an American economy stopped dead in its tracks. Time is running out, millions of unemployed are announced in the coming days.
Baroque still reigns supreme at the White House
However, the presidential moult has its limits. Less than ever, the President of the United States envisions being a bearer of bad news. He ensures, affirms, maintains the dreams that his instincts dictate to him: a vaccine at hand, miraculous remedies. Then let his experts add the necessary hindsight, caution, and disappointment. The year, at best, that separates the world from a possible immune solution. Tests still needed before you can get an antidote. The key to good command lies in the fair sharing of tasks.
And then he does not manage to make peace, or even to envisage a truce, with this press which he hates when she recalls what the first Donald Trump, the one who is no longer in use, said about the coronavirus .
