Trump’s Coronavirus Failure Is a Gift to the NRA
The government’s inept response to Covid-19 is helping to revive the gun lobby.
Open for business.
Photographer: GEORGE FREY/AFPIt seemed, for a time, that the National Rifle Association’s unprecedented investment in Donald Trump might have purchased the kind of misfortune experienced by so many previous Trump investors. The arrival of a pandemic seems to have changed all that.
Consider where the NRA was just a few months ago. After spending more than $30 million to help make Trump president, the organization was caught up in a parallel Russia scandal when it was revealed that it had been actively courting agents of Russian President Vladimir Putin while also being infiltrated by a young Russian woman who promoted herself as a gun activist and took detailed direction from a close ally of the Kremlin. There was also a series of ugly financial scandals, highlighting how NRA leader Wayne LaPierre and others lavish benefits on themselves, and bitter infighting. Lawsuits, countersuits, layoffs and financial shortfalls ensued.