OPINION | WHITE HOUSE
Don't make coronavirus political — make it stop instead
I get it — for Democrats, it has been a rough couple of years. Losing the presidency, failing on impeachment, witnessing a fundamental shift that split the party into “Democratic socialist” and classic Democrat camps. None of this has been easy on the party of JFK.
But nothing excuses how the Democratic leadership has acted in response to the 2019 outbreak of a new coronavirus worldwide.
According to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY.), the president’s “towering and dangerous incompetence” was to blame for the disease coming to the U.S., even though Schumer himself was against the president’s early travel restrictions that were so key to the administration’s aggressive response. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) criticized the president for not doing enough to work with scientists and other world leaders to contain its spread, while Sanders believes that eliminating incentives for the private sector to develop life-saving vaccines would be a better model for America to follow. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) caused Republican and Democratic representatives alike to criticize or walk out of her subcommittee’s hearing on coronavirus developments after she used her position as subcommittee chair to attack the administration for the diligent work being done by its top health officials.
There’s no reason to make America’s response to coronavirus a partisan issue. In fact, if there were any issue on which Democrats should root for the president’s success, it would be this one. Instead, they choose to continue on with the never-ending, ever-changing “hoax.” To them, anything and everything this president does is part of some vast conspiracy driven by mal-intent or sheer incompetence. And each time, it’s just their way to distract from the fact that with two years in control of the House, they have followed through on exactly zero of their promises to the American people and instead pursued worthless investigations of a president that they just don’t like. It’s no wonder many people believe the Democrats look like they’re rooting for a pandemic instead of the attempts to stop it — because they’ll go to any length to damage the reputation of this president.
At the end of the day, you have to wonder what actually comes out of this strategy to tie all the world’s problems to the president. I’m certain that had Donald Trump been president during the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows bridge, Senate Democrats would have drawn a direct line from its structural design to Donald Trump’s hand, most likely passing through Moscow along the way. It gets to a point of absurdity where, as Rep. DeLauro’s subcommittee proved, not every party member can handle the continual mandate to attack the president from behind the party line when there are real issues that the American people expect their elected representatives to take up.
For all the laments about the president supposedly “dividing the country,” moves like this prove that the Democrats are worsening a problem they theoretically are choosing a candidate to solve. There was a brief moment in Saturday’s press conference when the president responded to a question about U.S. cooperation and coordination with China over containing and treating coronavirus — and in terms of this standard of cooperative and unifying global leadership the Democrats believe the president cannot meet, it was rather profound:
“We have been talking to their people having to do with the virus. Our relationship with China is very good. Maybe closer because of what has happened here. In a certain way, this can bring the world closer. It can really do that."
He’s right. And, as it always should, America is engaging with the world to limit this problem by offering its best scientists to work on a solution while taking appropriate measures, like quarantines and travel restrictions, to keep American citizens safe from the spread of disease here at home. This, for those of you who still haven’t figured it out, is what the president means when he says “America First.” It’s America first, but not America alone.
So, blame the president all you want. His administration, faced with this incredible challenge, is doing everything it can at the national and international levels to get the job done. Because, at the end of the day, Americans’ safety and security at home is what really matters — and whenever an issue of the security of the American people is at hand, you can trust this president to make the right decision and put America first.
Corey R. Lewandowski is President Trump’s former campaign manager and a senior adviser to the Trump-Pence 2020 campaign. He is a senior adviser to the Great America Committee, Vice President Mike Pence's political action committee. He is co-author with David Bossie of “Trump’s Enemies” and of “Let Trump Be Trump: The Inside Story of His Rise to the Presidency.” Follow him on Twitter @CLewandowski_.
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