{"id":44395,"date":"2020-03-12T15:33:27","date_gmt":"2020-03-12T22:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=44395"},"modified":"2020-03-12T15:48:23","modified_gmt":"2020-03-12T22:48:23","slug":"after-a-plea-to-stop-the-partisanship-trump-unleashes-partisan-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=44395","title":{"rendered":"After a Plea to ‘Stop the Partisanship’ Trump Unleashes Partisan Attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday evening, Donald Trump delivered an Oval Office address intended to inform and calm the public on the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. His demeanor was strikingly dour as he clumsily read his remarks from a Teleprompter. It is hardly comforting when a president sounds and looks sick while talking about a spreading sickness. To make matters worse, he repeatedly made comments that were untrue<\/a><\/strong>, which had to be corrected afterward.<\/p>\n

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If Trump thought this speech would assuage the anxiety of nervous Americans, he was pitifully mistaken. He failed to offer a comprehensive plan to respond to the growing threat of widespread infections. His proposals mainly centered on travel restrictions and financial relief. And in that regard, his approach was not well received. During and after the speech the Dow Jones futures nosedived 800 points. And on Thursday the markets suffered an historic 10% decline, falling more than 2,300 points.<\/p>\n

There were efforts in the speech to unite the country and seek common ground to face this challenge together. “We must put politics aside,”<\/em> Trump said, “stop the partisanship, and unify together as one nation and one family.”<\/em> That’s straight out of the Politician’s Book of Platitudes. And coming from Trump, who has distinguished himself as the most hostile and politically divisive president in memory, it seemed especially disingenuous. Not surprisingly, it took him less than twelve hours to abandon his calls for inter-party harmony.<\/p>\n

In a pair of tweets Trump bitterly attacked Democrats that he regards as his natural enemies. In the first he complained that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wasn’t sufficiently deferential to his crisis strategy:<\/p>\n

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\u201cNancy Pelosi all of a sudden doesn\u2019t like the payroll tax cut, but when Obama proposed it she thought it was a brilliant thing that all of the working families would benefit from because if you get a paycheck, you\u2019re going to take home more money.\u201d @kilmeade<\/a> @foxandfriends<\/a><\/p>\n

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 12, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n