Trump Stumbles
While President Biden's face plant at the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony garnered the most attention, a pair of unforced errors committed by Donald Trump raised some questions about his electability in the 2024 election.
Determined to damage his closest competitor for the Republican nomination, Trump assailed Gov. Ron DeSantis for his performance during the covid pandemic while simultaneously praising the performance of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The facts do not support Trump's claims. Accounting for age, the death rate from covid in New York was more than 300 per 100,000 inhabitants. In Florida, it was 245 per 100,000 inhabitants. Key contributors to the higher death rate under Cuomo were his rush to put patients on ventilators, which research now shows exacerbated bacterial infections that killed a majority of those put on ventilators, and an executive order requiring nursing homes housing the elderly and most vulnerable to take in persons known to be already infected with the virus.
Health wasn't the only damage done by Cuomo's policies. He also imposed a more severe and lengthy lockdown that sent unemployment up to 17%. In contrast, DeSantis ended Florida's lockdown after one month when unemployment surged by 14%. Since that time Florida's unemployment rate has dropped to 2.6%. New York's is currently at 4%.
A second unforced error was when Trump denounced his former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany for citing a poll showing him leading DeSantis by 25% when a different poll showed him with 34% lead. Despite her loyal service during his presidency, this incident earned her a new Trump epithet of "milktoast" and an accusation of disloyalty, even though as a Fox News host her professional obligation would be to be fair rather than loyal.
After other Republicans suggested that he ought to be focusing on the damage Biden's policies have done to the country, Trump doubled down on his accusations of disloyalty for both DeSantis and McEnany, saying "I lifted them both up from obscurity. Without my endorsement DeSanctimonious would never have won his 2018 election for governor. Before I made Kayleigh my press secretary in 2020 nobody knew who she was and she never would've have gotten her current job at Fox News. They both owe me big time."
These unforced errors caused New Hampshire Republican state representative James Spillane to withdraw his endorsement of Trump, saying "I was hoping to see Trump focus on the issues, but he's got the whole covid thing backwards. Then there's the name-calling, vitriol, and disregard for others that Trump has been exhibiting." Spillane switched his endorsement to DeSantis. He is the fourth New Hampshire state representative to make this switch in the last month.
SEMI-NEWS/SEMI-SATIRE by John Semmens
