A Crumbling Veneer: As Americans Die and the Country Declines, Donald Trump’s Incompetence and Inhumanity Shine Through
Jonathan Swan could not contain his shock. Asking the President of the United States simple questions about the reality of the worsening pandemic, he became visibly and painfully confused by the answer he received. Donald Trump, brandishing a fistful of print-offs he obviously did not understand, tried to sell Swan on the idea that America had not only conquered the virus, but had performed better than the rest of the world.
We have discussed Trump’s disastrous “positive thinking” and aggressive adherence to an alternate reality wherein everything is going according to his will, but this was one of those moments where Trump’s dreamworld collided with an outsider unwilling to assuage his ego.
Of course, Trump has surrounded himself his entire life with “yes” men and women who tirelessly pledge fealty while feeding him cherry-picked reports that hide his incompetencies and play up his “successes.” In this way, Trump has remained safely in his bubble, where he is the hero of his own story and anyone failing to recognize that must be an “enemy” or a “terrorist.” This mindset, as we have seen, is inherently authoritarian in nature and inspires dangerous ideas like full-throated fascism and, most recently, the destruction of democratic institutions.
Unfortunately, many Americans who should have known better, who should have recognized Trump as the danger that he obviously was, as an incompetent, delusional huckster, failed in their responsibilities. It began with the 2016 Presidential Election, where outlets used Trump for record ratings while assuming the American system would reject him as a buffoon. Their profits soared, and continue to soar, all because their obsession with ratings and their bottom lines obscured their judgment and motivated their behaviors. As president, the media has attempted to legitimize Trump over and over again, all of it under the auspices of “respecting the office” of the presidency, an insane priority to maintain the respectability of our government while Trump destroys our institutions and damns us to unnecessary death and suffering.
The results have been staggering. America teeters on the edge of becoming a failed state, the Trump Administration is urging Americans to embrace dying from the coronavirus, our schoolchildren are being thrust into the maw of a pandemic with no plans or resources, and the record now shows definitively that Trump and company have carried out a political genocide against Democratic-alligned Americans.
It is horrifying and continues to grow more horrifying by the day. But Jonathan Swan’s interview has made clear what was already clear to so many of us: Trump is not only incapable of the job, his woeful inadequacy and broken nature as a human being puts us all at risk. Swan’s reactions during this “conversation” have gone viral because this is the correct response to Donald Trump. Shock and horror. Even disbelief at how definitively disgusting he is and how far we have already fallen.
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. He currently serves as an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.
