, Columnist
Trump Is No Exception: Mass Death Always Affects U.S. Presidents
Regardless of their cause, fatalities on such a scale inevitably transform a nation.
Do you trust him with such delicate, complex decisions?
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The U.S. has surpassed 28,000 dead from Covid-19, which is almost certainly an undercount, and is bracing for more. President Donald Trump’s partisan and incoherent response — the sum of his positions is that he has both total authority and zero responsibility — has made the crisis more political than it might have been. Multiple governors have shown a better way.
Yet mass death, whether from disease or war, inevitably causes political tremors. And when the landscape resettles, it doesn’t always look the same.