[phkahler]

>> No, sorry. Trump owns the pandemic.

Nope. The pandemic was a no-win situation. When trump cut off travel to China he was called xenophobic, and then later it was said that he didn't act soon enough. The politicization of the pandemic (on both sides) was not appropriate and now we've got Republicans avoiding the vaccine out of spite.

Some of his off the cuff comments were stupid and ill-conceived, but he never actually told anyone to do anything with bleach.

His biggest mistake in the pandemic IMHO was having daily press conferences to in order to look like he was in charge and things were under control. So many things go wrong when people worry about appearances...

[aw1621107]

> When trump cut off travel to China he was called xenophobic, and then later it was said that he didn't act soon enough.

In this particular case, those statements aren’t precisely contradictory.

The travel ban was criticized because it was wholly inadequate for the purposes of preventing infected persons from entering the country, as American citizens (and their immediate (?) family IIRC) could enter freely. “Xenophobic” might have arisen out of the targeting of foreigners while leaving Americans alone, though I offer no opinion as to whether that is an accurate label.

Even if the ban were effective, it was too late since IIRC there were already cases in the US, so that criticism is accurate unless I am remembering incorrectly.

[dragonwriter]

> The pandemic was a no-win situation.

A no win situation is not one with no wrong answers; Trump’s approach [0] was equivalent to handling the Kobayashi Maru by heading a maximum warp to the nearest Federation colony and bombarding it with photon torpedoes.

[0] notably, but not limited to, obstructing early state access to emergency supplies and distributing federal supplies based on political affinity with the governor rather than need, with a deliberate strategy of maximizing the impact in Democratic-governed states and leveraging it as an election issue.