5/8/20
WASHINGTON —
With unemployment at its worst rate since the Great Depression, and deaths from COVID-19 still rising in most of the country, President Trump argued Friday that Americans should not hold him responsible for the calamity on his watch.
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Less than six months before election day, Trump’s new campaign message — don’t blame him — is a risky bet that voters will credit his efforts to fight the pandemic and revive the moribund economy, and not hold him accountable for the administration’s much-criticized response and the 75,000 U.S. deaths so far, the most of any country. The message, which Democrats quickly rejected, echoed Trump’s not-my-fault claim after Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Congress on March 12 that the government’s lack of widespread testing for the coronavirus was “a failing.”
“I don’t take responsibility at all,” Trump said the next day, although he had downplayed the danger of the virus for weeks. No president likes taking blame when things go bad, but it’s unusual by any historic standard for a “wartime president,” as Trump has called himself, to adamantly declare his own lack of influence or culpability.
Most presidents acknowledge a degree of humility if not fallibility and ask fellow Americans — and God — for help in achieving their policy goals. Trump took a dramatically different tack at the Republican National Convention in 2016, declaring of America’s problems, “I alone can fix it.” That proved an empty boast, at least for the coronavirus crisis. Trump has variously blamed former President Obama, China, the World Health Organization, Democrats, governors and the media. “Trump loves to crow about the great economy he built,” Biden said in a speech Friday from his home in Wilmington, Del. “When the crisis hit, it became clear who the economy was built to serve. Not the workers, not the middle class, not families.” Internal Trump campaign polling shows that Trump is losing ground in swing states, according to a person involved in the reelection campaign who requested anonymity to discuss strategy and data.