Dear Mr. President

Isabella Graf, Guest Columnist
April 10, 2020

The following is a column submitted by senior Isabella Graf. Want to share an opinion of your own? Send an op-ed to [email protected].

Isabella Graft, Guest Columnist

Dear Mr. President,

What are you doing? 

Our nation and our world are in the middle of a war, a war like nothing we have faced before. We are at war against an invisible enemy that threatens to destroy our way of life, and for many, life itself. This enemy does not negotiate, it does not surrender, and it will not cease to ravage our society unless we wholeheartedly stand up against it. And so again I ask, What are you doing?

As the leader of the free world, the American people are supposed to look up to you. They are supposed to place their trust, their hope and their faith within your hands; they are supposed to believe that you are their selfless leader, prepared to do everything in your power to ensure the health and well being of his people above all else. This should be your shining moment, your chance to show the American people that in a time of crisis, of fear, of uncertainty, you can rise to the challenge and pull a nation in great distress back together.

On March 6 you touted the falsehood that “anyone that needs a test, gets a test” merely one day after your own Vice President, as well as various health experts, urged that the United States was experiencing great shortages in testing kits. On March 11 you claimed that private health-insurance companies had “agreed to waive all co-payments for coronavirus treatments, extend insurance coverage to these treatments, and to prevent surprise medical billing”, when in reality, only the cost of the coronavirus testing would be waived. 

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This should be your shining moment, your chance to show the American people that in a time of crisis, you can rise to the challenge and pull a nation in great distress back together.

On March 13, I watched intently as you formally declared the COVID-19 Pandemic a “national emergency”.  I breathed a sigh of relief that finally, you had chosen to see this virus for what it truly was; not just the“flu,” but a very real and dangerous threat to the American people. In my mind, your previous dismissiveness of the virus and failure to act when our country was at the forefront of the outbreak could not be forgotten, but I was ready to move past it; I was ready to give you another chance.

Since that day, I have watched your daily press conferences, hopeful that you will finally rise to the challenge, and be the leader we need you to be as we confront a crisis of unprecedented magnitude. Yet, you continue to engage in your regular antics. You continuously choose to misinform, mislead and misplace blame.  You continuously choose to let down the American people at a time when they need you most.

 On March 19, you asserted that the FDA had approved the antimalarial drug chloroquine to treat COVID-19. Mere minutes later, the FDA commissioner was forced to correct you, and clarify that the drug had not been approved for the treatment of COVID-19 and still had to undergo extensive testing in a clinical setting. Five days later, a man from Arizona died after attempting to take the drug that the ‘President of the United States’ touted as a “cure” for Coronavirus. Your misinformation kills, Mr. President. 

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Yet, you continue to engage in your regular antics. You continuously choose to misinform, mislead and misplace blame. You continuously choose to let down the American people at a time when they need you most.

With New York’s emergence as America’s epicenter of the virus, hospital beds, ventilators, masks, and protective gear have grow increasingly scarce as the state continues to drown in cases. Their Doctors and nurses have become truly scared for the first time in their careers; forced to risk their own lives due to the lack of PPE to save those infected. Yet amidst all of this, amidst all of the suffering you again dispute the indisputable. In response to a desperate request by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for ventilators, you responded with dismissive ignorance. “I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators,” you say, in spite of plentiful government reports predicting catastrophic shortages in medical equipment that lie ahead in the course of this pandemic.

You blamed China. On March 21 you said you wished China “would have told us earlier” about the novel coronavirus. You knew about it, Mr. President, far earlier than you care to admit, however, you failed to act until extensive damage was already done. Numerous reports from as early as January indicate that US intelligence officials were aware of, and had been warning about, the potential for COVID-19 to become a pandemic. On March 19, you referred to the scientifically termed COVID-19, as the “Chinese Virus” in yet another attempt to deflect blame for the eruption of this pandemic in the United States off of your administration. By doing so, you have only exacerbated the presence of misdirected anger and violence against Asians and Asian Americans. Your words set an example Mr. President, and the example of prioritizing the scrutinization of another country over response efforts for your own people during a crisis is not only extremely counterproductive, but it unfairly implicates an entire ethnicity. This rhetoric, Mr. President, only further divides us into an ever-dangerous us vs. them mentality at a time when we so desperately need to unite.  

You blamed your own impeachment. In a letter written to Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer on April 2, you somehow managed to fabricate a completely baseless claim, blaming the massive outbreak of COVID-19 in New York which began in March, on the impeachment inquiry that concluded in early February.  You wrote, “If you spent less time on your ridiculous impeachment hoax, which went haplessly on forever and ended up going nowhere (except increasing my poll numbers), and instead focused on helping the people of New York, then New York would not have been so completely unprepared for the ‘invisible enemy.’” This speaks for itself.

You aimlessly search for a scapegoat. On April 7 you threatened to hold funding from the World Health Organization.

Mr. President, in what world is this logical? The WHO is perhaps the most vital organization involved in addressing and combating this pandemic throughout the world, and there is no evidence to support that it has been anything but proactive in combating this pandemic. Threatening to cut their funding marks yet another one of your pitiful attempts to shamelessly cover up your own inaction by casting someone else as the villain responsible for the severity of the outbreak we are currently experiencing.

You offer false hope. You hold onto undue hope and perilous optimism to shift attention away from the reality of an alarming rise in infections, a mounting economic crisis, and your administration’s failure to act swiftly and strictly enough that undoubtedly cost American lives. On March 15 you said “It’s a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something we have tremendous control over.” Under control, Mr. President? After you left the room, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was forced to counter this falsehood as best he could without directly confronting the fact that you had deceived the American people once again, saying, “The worst is yet ahead of us.”

Despite your criticisms in January of “the democrats politicizing” in the wake of a pandemic, and that “this is their new hoax,” you politicize the crisis yourself. You brazenly touted the “ratings” of your daily Coronavirus press briefings.

It is extremely alarming to me Mr. President, that these are the numbers you are focusing on, that these are the numbers that matter to you. It is extremely alarming to me that you, the President of the United States, see it fit to turn a global pandemic into a popularity contest, casting yourself as the winner. 

My point, Mr. President, is that people listen to you, they trust your words, or at least they want to. I shouldn’t have to watch the Task Force briefings every day, skeptical if the words that come out of your mouth are true. I shouldn’t have to wince every time you excessively exaggerate, inappropriately offer self-congratulation, misplace blame, ignore facts, and deflect responsibility.

I should be able to trust and respect my President. We are in the middle of a global pandemic, a crisis that begs unforgiving uncertainty in itself. The only cure to uncertainty is to acknowledge, accept and disclose the truth of the matter, and leave everything else out. We cannot have a president who refuses to accept the facts and the words of scientists and public health experts alike. We cannot have a president who refuses to take responsibility “at all,” and who refuses to accept he could be doing more. I may not have voted for you, but that doesn’t mean I want you to fail; the stakes are much too high. The American people are scared Mr. President, I am scared. So please, start telling the truth.