Noah Feldman, Columnist

Coronavirus Response Shows Trump Isn’t a Dictator

The president has shied away from trying to grab power.

March 30, 2020 at 5:00 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

President Donald Trump has hesitated to take control of the coronavirus response.
Photographer: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

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This weekend, President Donald Trump did a rapid about-face, pulling back from his suggestion that he might try to quarantine New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. It marked a significant moment in his response to the coronavirus pandemic. It symbolizes Trump’s fairly consistent choice thus far in the Covid-19 crisis to reject the impulse to grab power.

There’s a script for populist autocrats in emergencies: maximize executive power, restrict civil liberties, delay or suspend elections. Trump has pretty consistently done the opposite during this crisis.