The speech was full of errors and instead of responding to people's most urgent need — viral testing, which is close to nonexistent now — Trump imposed a travel ban on Europe out of the blue, a largely unnecessary step that escalated the crisis to a new level, pissed off America's allies, and was glaringly slapdash.
Travel to countries such as Poland and Finland, where the virus is close to nonexistent now, is banned yet it's allowed still to the United Kingdom, which has a far higher rate of infection. Everyone immediately suspected the reason for this exemption — Trump owns resort properties in Britain.
Stock market futures immediately began tanking even before Trump finished speaking Wednesday night and plummeted once trading opened yesterday, dropping by the largest numerical amount in history. In the last month alone, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the traditional market measure, has lost more than eight thousand points, nearly 30 percent of its value from only a month ago.
Indeed, the market has fallen so far and so fast that it's now nearly at the level it was when Trump took office in 2017. His constant bragging point about the strong stock market under his presidency has now evaporated. The Dow has now lost more than 85 percent of the gain since the day Trump was sworn into office.
There was a lot of media coverage about Trump's trainwreck of a speech on Wednesday night. I think the best piece I read on the subject was by veteran Washington correspondent Susan Glasser at the New Yorker (link here). It's not long and highly recommended.
Many people who began opposing Trump as soon as he ran for office said he would be incapable of handling a national crisis if it were to strike while he was President, if elected. This week the reality of that warning could not be any clearer.
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