With the St. Louis branch of the Federal Reserve projecting a loss of over 47 million jobs and a 32.1% unemployment rate — the Great Depression saw a peak of 24.9% unemployed — Donald Trump wants you to know that he’s still winning where it really counts . . . the Nielsen TV Ratings.
Because the “Ratings” of my News Conferences etc. are so high, “Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers” according to the @nytimes, the Lamestream Media is going CRAZY. “Trump is reaching too many people, we must stop him.” said one lunatic. See you at 5:00 P.M.!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2020
…On Monday, nearly 12.2 million people watched Mr. Trump’s briefing on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to Nielsen — ‘Monday Night Football’ numbers. Millions more are watching on ABC, CBS, NBC and online streaming sites, and the audience is expanding. On Monday, Fox News…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2020
…alone attracted 6.2 million viewers for the president’s briefing — an astounding number for a 6 p.m. cable broadcast, more akin to the viewership for a popular prime-time sitcom…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2020
Trump also wants you to know that even though he predicted last month there would be “close to zero” deaths from COVID-19, he believes his administration will have “done a very good job” addressing the pandemic if he can keep the number of those who die between 100,000 – 200,000.
When Trump ran for president in 2016, he promised so much winning that we’d beg him to stop. If this is winning, I’m begging right now . . . STOP!
This never-ending focus on his popularity is standard operating procedure for the Narcissist-in-Chief, but during a national pandemic where tens of millions of people are likely to suffer, his egomaniacal behavior has even raised concerns within the GOP . . . sort of.
Robert Costa with the Washington Post is reporting that many Republicans are “unsettled” by Trump’s self-centered boasting during this troubled time, although not enough to actually grow a spine.
“It’s unsettled many Democrats who have publicly said, ‘Why is the president talking about ratings?’ [But] Republicans, because President Trump has such control over the GOP, are mostly expressing any unsettled feelings privately.”
While most recreant Republicans are indeed too chicken-hearted to point a finger at Trump for his self-aggrandizing disposition, others in the party have gone to work defending his lack of leadership during the coronavirus pandemic by placing the blame for his failure right where they think it belongs . . . with the Democrats.
Or to be more specific, with impeachment.
According to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who studied the coronavirus in January during the Martin Luther King Day weekend and used what he learned to warn the White House to ban travel from China, the reason Trump and the host of Trumpist Republicans failed to address COVID-19 sooner was because they were distracted by impeachment.
“It’s unfortunate that during the early days of a global pandemic, the Senate was paralyzed by a partisan impeachment trial.”
Conveniently left out of this latest attempt to use impeachment as a distraction is the fact that the trial wrapped up on Feb. 5. Still, Trump and the GOP spent all of February downplaying the coronavirus threat with Trump calling it “under control” and a “problem that’s going to go away” while assuring America that deaths from the disease would be “close to zero.”
Hey, at least they aren’t blaming the media for their failures. Wait a minute . . . scratch that.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable and promotes conservative principles over political parties.
Follow the Strident Conservative on Twitter and Facebook.
Subscribe to receive podcasts of radio commentaries: iTunes | Stitcher | Tune In | RSS
1 comment for “Republicans blame impeachment for Trump’s coronavirus failures”