“Trump has been hurt in a way that he hadn’t been before this. The Ukraine impeachment was quite flimsy, a waste of time. But this performance by Trump, this daily performance at the White House, really does,” Lauria told host John Kiriakou on Wednesday.
“Every country in the world was unprepared for this pandemic, and that is really something criminal. And the US in particular, and many of its allies, were prepared for the wrong war. They were prepared for a war they really can’t fight against Russia or China. They were not prepared for an invisible enemy … so the US wasn’t prepared, Trump wasn’t prepared. His behavior has been extraordinary … his incompetence. The guy is not only incompetent, but he can’t fake it anymore now. That has to hurt him in this election,” Lauria added.
In the past five weeks, tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs. The US gross domestic product is also expected to shrink by 40% this quarter, according to a report by CNBC. Trump has faced criticism for downplaying the virus in February, claiming at the time that the risk to Americans “remains very low,” and for wondering aloud last week whether bleach and isopropyl alcohol, common disinfectants, could be used inside the human body to kill the virus the same way they do when used on surfaces. After receiving widespread criticism over the disinfectant theory, the US president said that his comment was sarcastic.
However, this is not the first time Trump’s comments on potential COVID-19 treatments have been criticized by the media. In late March, the president claimed that the drugs hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, consumed together, “have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers” in the fight against COVID-19.
Even though researchers and hospitals are using hydroxychloroquine to treat some coronavirus patients, the US Food and Drug Administration on Friday warned against the use of the drug outside of a hospital setting or a clinical trial, as it has had adverse effects on some patients.
The journalist noted that Trump had banked on a strong economy carrying him into the November 2020 elections in which he will face his Democratic predecessor’s vice president, Joe Biden.
“This is where he screwed up, like many governments did. He was warned and did nothing about it. So he has total blame there for that. The way he’s handled this - when a country needs a leader most in a crisis, in an unprecedented crisis like this, both medical and economic, Trump has failed miserably,” Lauria said.
“He can’t be blamed necessarily completely for what’s happened to the economy, because the rest of the countries in the world are being smashed … but it’s the economy and the fact that he was going to run on this strong economy, that’s what he kept talking about. He thought he had a really good path to the White House, and now he got blindsided by this. And instead of a booming economy he kept bragging about, we’re going to have another depression, it looks like … this [the pandemic] is going to destroy any presidential candidate ... Trump is vulnerable,” Lauria explained.
Trump’s decreasing popularity amid the pandemic could propel Biden to a presidential victory in 2020.
A recent poll by USA Today and Suffolk University shows that Biden is leading Trump across the nation by six percentage points - 44% to 38%. By contrast, when he was being impeached by the House of Representatives in December, Trump led Biden by three percentage points in the same survey.
