The Trump Reopening: Yet Another Fraudulent Trump Product
The first question from the White House Press Corps was whether a reopened America would have its sports stadiums filled with fans. It was a ridiculous opening to a ridiculous affair, but the Trump Administration’s experts treated it honestly and responsibly, saying the time would come but not to rush things. Of course, Donald Trump had to step in because his idea of the American presidency is to oversee the nation’s spectacles and its many pastimes. Already, Trump told the reporters, he could see stadiums like the one in Tuscaloosa, Alabama that hosts the Crimson Tide filled with over one hundred thousand screaming fans.
His plan to realize that toddler’s vision is called Opening Up America Again, a mouthful of a slogan that has been engineered by his Committee to Reopen America to mirror his Make America Great Again election slogan. Ironically, they’re very similar. Trump’s promise to make American great “again” was always a fable, a myth to return to some point in time that never actually existed. It was an unfulfillable promise. And so his promise to “Open America Again.”
Not only is it not within Trump’s authority to open anything besides, maybe, the federal government, but none of his guidelines have served as guideposts through any of this disaster. His “Fifteen Days To Stop The Spread” was a joke that Vice-President and Chief-Bootlicker Mike Pence held up at press briefings so the newspapers around the country could have a photo that showed they were treating this preposterous joke with dignity and respect. This entire time, Trump has told the states to handle their own business, and so they have.
This plan - conveniently rolled out on April 16th so that its two-weeks timetable would mean the country might reopen on May 1st, the day Trump has pushed for for weeks now - is non-binding and absurd, an illusion to show the country that Trump is actually doing something. It doesn’t matter that people are still dying and that the disease is still spreading. On May 1st, Trump will hold his very own “Mission Accomplished” moment , and like George W. Bush, his administration is undoubtedly spending more time on planning the celebration of handling the problem than actually handling the problem.
It is, like everything else Trump lends his seedy name to, a product. Open America Again is just another iteration of Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump Shuttle, Trump Magazine, Trump University. A doomed to fail good that serves only to get Trump’s name in the news and grift some poor believers into shelling over a few bucks or their vote. It isn’t intended to work. It isn’t intended to last. As long as Trump can cash whatever check comes from this round of frauds and get out of town, or declare bankruptcy before the payment comes due, he’ll be fine.
He’s always fine.
Of course, the press conference and announcement yesterday would never have been possible without the recent “protest” in Michigan where MAGA-hats swarmed the streets, attacked their governor, and demanded the state reopen even as its deaths continue to pile on. It was revealed, quietly and without little fanfare, that the group responsible received support from Trump Administration Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her billionaire family, making it essentially yet another astroturf, fake propaganda moment. It is the kind of manipulation despots like Vladimir Putin carry out in authoritarian states to create the appearance of political events and movements. Of course, it’s also what happened in 2010 with the Tea Party, designed and focused and funded by libertarian billionaires the Kochs and other shadowy oligarchs looking to control and sway American politics.
We are in a dark time. The reality of things is always in question because that is how authoritarians like Donald Trump rule nations. They provide no service while promising they’ve given everything. They bend reality until it begins to fray and brake. They’ll sell you one product to destroy everything and another to rebuilt it. Only it’s not rebuilt. It was never real to begin with.
Jared Yates Sexton is the author of American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed Its People, available for pre-order from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Politico, and elsewhere. Currently he is an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.