Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Dear Commons Community,

Paul Krugman, The New York Times columnist and colleague at CUNY, reminds us this morning that 2020, Trump’s last year in office, was a disaster for the country.  Trump’s inability to deal with the coronavirus resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions seriously ill.  Here is an excerpt.

“2020 — the fourth quarter, if you will, of Trump’s presidency — was a nightmare. And part of what made it a nightmare was the fact that America was led by a man who responded to a deadly crisis with denial, magical thinking and, above all, total selfishness — focused at every stage not on the needs of the nation but on what he thought would make him look good.

….he denied, dithered and delayed at nearly every step of the way.”

Krugman’s conclusion:

“There’s no real question that thousands of Americans died unnecessarily because of Trump’s dereliction of duty in the face of Covid-19.

He responded to the only major crisis of his presidency with self-serving fantasies — with utter indifference to other Americans’ lives in an effort to boost his image.

Are we now really supposed to feel nostalgic about 2020?”

In sum, in a time of a national crisis, Trump was a “dithering” idiot who caused people to die.

The entire column is worth a read!

Tony

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