Trump’s latest move in the coronavirus game will not save a single American life

Editorial: It is a quite transparent electoral tactic from a president who may be starting to wonder if his mishandling of the coronavirus crisis will cost him his job

It is a transparent electoral tactic from a president who may fear for his job (Reuters)

As a public health measure to protect the health and lives of Americans, the latest initiative from Donald Trump is pretty much irrelevant.

Issuing a tweet stating that all “immigration” (a very wide definition, presumably) into the United States will be ended through executive order won’t be of any immediate assurance to hard-pressed authorities in New York or Louisiana, for example.

Given the circumstances, legal migration work purposes are minimal in any case, and international travel is at a virtual standstill.

What the tweet does do, in an embarrassingly crude and obvious way, is to help mobilise the president’s renowned “base”, in his words “our GREAT American Citizens” (sic).

Note too that the proposed order is designed to help protect American jobs – at a time when the public health emergency is doing far more damage to the economy, inevitably, than cheap Chinese imports. It has the unmistakeable echo of that notorious 2016 pledge about a “total and complete shutdown” of borders to Muslims.

It is a quite transparent electoral tactic from a president who may be starting to wonder if his mishandling of the coronavirus crisis will cost him his job.

None of that, unfortunately, means that this latest bizarre tweet won’t work politically. His even more absurd calls to “liberate” three states with Democratic governors and anti-Covid-19 measures in place certainly got the Trumpites out on the streets, a few toting assault rifles. Leaning out of their Dodge Rams and Jeep Cherokees, they want, to borrow an old revolutionary slogan, to be given liberty or death.

They want to get back to work – a perfectly reasonable desire. Instead of blaming immigrants or the Chinese, or believing in some conspiracy theory, they should instead be demanding that their president bring the public health emergency to an end by backing state governors and the partial lockdowns.

They would also be better advised to seek further federal relief to weather this storm and to create a bridge to a more stable future.

An end to immigration, realistic or not, will not save a single American job or a single American life. But don’t expect President Trump to tell them that.