Power and responsibility

With great power comes great responsibility; so goes the old aphorism. For over three years Trump has enjoyed the former while shirking the latter. Covid-19 is therefore a bigger problem for him than any he has faced yet, since there will be consequences for his actions (or lack of) that will be hard to dismiss with alternative facts. His poodle-like supporters in the Senate and the House cannot protect him from a pandemic as they did during his impeachment.  Of course that will not prevent him and Fox from trying to rewrite history as they have already begun doing, by making that very accusation against the voices of reason. 

Until yesterday, Trump was happy to let the governors make their own decisions so that he could avoid taking blame; that was until they started publicly contradicting him. Until early April, even Democratic governors knew that if they wanted help from his administration they need to fawn over him and massage his fragile, narcissistic ego. That seems to have come to an end when it became clear to many of them that the administration was so incompetent that sycophantic compliments were not getting the job done; they began to be more assertive with regards the timing of re-opening their states' economies.

Trump appears to have seen this as a challenge to his authority, authority he had been hesitant to wield lest he get blamed for the ramifications, and (incorrectly) asserted that he was the only decision maker who could say when the mitigation measures were to be lifted. States rights, apparently, only matter when Trump and the GOP say they do.