Trump’s coronavirus response is disastrous – but at least it is scrutinised

Dominic Raab, Matt Hancock and Priti Patel hardly carry the menace of Donald Trump, or even Donald Duck. Yet all have been meekly allowed to dodge straight questions, spout drivel and give insulting non-apologies, barely challenged, says Matthew Norman

Donald Trump said the press had not reported on his coronavirus response ‘as they should be’ (AP)

You could spend centuries debating which of Donald Trump’s decisions was the most lustrously bananas, and historians will. But to drop one contender into this teeming pot, glance at the Council To Reopen America photo montage broadcast by Fox News.

Fans of superhero movies will be familiar with posters of Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor, Captain America and Hulk, their grimly determined faces pointing towards the existential battle ahead. If Trump’s gang suggests a fantasy film supergroup, however, it isn’t Marvel’s Avengers. It’s DC’s Suicide Squad – although since this mob aren’t putting their own lives on the line, Homicide Squad seems more apt.

However bizarre the council’s members, its absentees are more so. The team advising the portly old goat when and how to relax restrictions is devoid of doctors. America’s top mind on infectious disease isn’t there, though Anthony Fauci is on another roster. He’s now on Trump’s hit list after conceding that, had Trump acted quicker on his coronahoax, many fewer would be dead and dying.

On Monday, while Trump was retweeting the hashtag #SackFauci, he was also putting together a troupe of experts whose combined epidemiological knowledge wouldn’t fill the shrivelled sanity lobe of his brain. Presidential daughter/lust object Ivanka is there, as is her husband Jared Kushner, whose gilded career as a slum landlord goes such a long way to establishing his credentials. The others include Mark Meadows, this week’s chief of staff, and Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, a former hedge fund manager. Not only is not one a medic. None is an economist.

You could say this gathering represents the ultimate victory of ignorance over expertise. But since Kanye West, Kid Rock and a pardoned Joe Exotic may soon be drafted, best not jump the gun with superlatives yet.

In reality, of course, the Council to Reopen America Promptly (as I hereby amend it for the acronym) is the committee to re-elect Trump by another name. Its remit has nothing to do with lowering fatalities, and all to do with raising stock markets. Trump would merrily watch ten thousand corpses being tossed into unmarked graves for a 100 point jump in the Dow. The Homicide Squad will reflect his exquisite sensibilities. The saving grace is that its advice may have minimal impact, though Trump doesn’t understand why. As confirmed in his most sphinctre-loosening primetime rantfest to date, the guy who took an oath to protect the US constitution hasn’t read it. If he had, he’d have noted that the tenth amendment places it beyond the federal government’s remit to dictate to individual states unless the power to do so is stated in the constitution. Ordering governors to end lockdowns is not.

Trump disputes this. “Some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President ...” he tweeted on Monday. “Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect.” He didn’t cite any sources, other implicitly than his own massive intellect. But he did double down on this bespoke reading by informing the media: “When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total.”

Total authority with no responsibility – the prerogative of the absolute monarch. Only, as plucky reporters reminded him, he isn’t a king. Like others before, only more so, the broadcast caused conflicting emotions this side of the Atlantic. On the one hand, there was the usual relief that our leadership isn’t actively auditioning for a stage revival of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Dominic Raab would be out of his depth as deputy manager of a leisure centre facing a verruca outbreak in the swimming pool. But he wouldn’t send thousands to their maker to hike the FTSE 500. On the other hand, that small mercy doesn’t justify the gulf between the cloying pliancy of British media and the defiance on show in Washington.

There are historical reasons for this. In America, born as a reaction against tyranny, power is instinctively mistrusted. Britain, which also banished an imperial monarchy but quickly restored it, is a much more sycophantic nation than its bulldog self-image suggests. So while footage of NBC’s Paula Reid ignoring Trump’s demand for silence to harry him over his dilatory pandemic response came as no shock, it came with a stab of envy.

Raab, Matt Hancock and Priti Patel hardly carry the menace of Donald Trump, or Donald Duck, or even snooker star Judd Trump. Yet all have been meekly allowed to dodge straight questions, spout drivel, and give insulting non-apologies, barely challenged. It is distressingly plain that they have collective cabinet responsibility for condemning the old to die in care homes.

Perhaps a Paula Reid will emerge to hold a minister to account for the shaming failure to foresee the blatantly foreseeable. But while most British hacks are chipping in from home via dodgy broadband connections, the opportunity for sustained questioning will be limited, even if the will were there. In Washington, where reporters attend the White House regardless of risk, their boldness extends to speaking scepticism to power.

Given the choice between proper media oversight of a malevolent madman and undue deference to well intentioned inadequates, you’d plump for the second. Neither the recovering PM nor his representatives will countenance causing death on a mammoth scale for economic advantage. The crappest superhero team ever compiled – and yes, I have seen Justice League – certainly will.

In Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos wiped out half the universe. He did so, in that cute genocidal maniac way of his, to preserve the other half, in what he imagined as paradise. On behalf of their self-anointed sovereign, the Homicide Squad’s motive will be infinitely more callous. When they tell Donald what he wants to hear, the resistance will fall to the trinity of Fauci (if he survives), the non-partisan US media and above all, the governors.

Whether or not resistance is futile, it will at least exist. If only that could be said here in the global epicentre of craven deference.