Donald Trump talks a lot. When he talks, he is inclined toward frankness — an unvarnished stream of consciousness that can sometimes approximate guilelessness. But while the former president does let his audiences in on his inner monologue, he is rarely candid. In Trump’s efforts to revise the record he established in his last year in office, the former president reveals how little regard he has for his supporters’ intelligence.
Of all the political handicaps Trump has brought with him into his third run for the White House, Covid seems to weigh on him the heaviest. It isn’t long into his prologued disquisitions on his own “tremendous” record in the White House before the former president digresses into embittered reflections on how the pandemic interrupted his success. Sometimes, Trump blames the virus for scuttling “the greatest economy in history.” At others, he takes credit for its second-order effects (“We had the gasoline for the car down to $1.87 a gallon,” he told a constituent during last night’s Fox News–sponsored town hall — a rough figure attributable only to the cratering demand for transportation in April and May of 2020). His efforts to defuse the liability represented by Covid vary, but Trump’s insecurity with the subject matter is constant.
Comments