“Trump is such a habitual liar he is incapable of being honest, even when being honest would serve his interests.”

“It’s hard to name a president who has been as overwhelmed by a crisis as the coronavirus has overwhelmed Donald Trump.”

“The avalanche of false information from the president has been most alarming of all. It’s been one rock slide after another, the likes of which we have never seen. Day after day after day he brazenly denied reality.”

These quotes are from a breathtaking new article in The Atlantic, titled “The Trump Presidency is Over.”

One would think that reading a story pronouncing Trump’s presidency, his “reign,” as over (or ending), one would feel triumphant. Instead it just feels tremendously sad, almost empty.

First, it should be said, that nothing is “over” until he is out of office and unable to do more damage. But even accepting the premise, that it is indeed over, it is the amount of damage it took to drive the nail in the coffin that is so sad. Indeed, virtually none of the damage has even set-in yet. Yes, we’ll miss March Madness (I will really miss March Madness), but that is nothing, we’re talking about the damage that comes from losing loved ones, the damage that comes from being sick two weeks, being sick two weeks while missing two weeks of much needed paychecks, empty malls, empty restaurants, 401Ks in the dumper, so much damage needed to “end” the presidency of a man who – to all thinking people – was so obviously incapable of doing the job.

That said, the president and his administration are responsible for grave, costly errors, most especially the epic manufacturing failures in diagnostic testing, the decision to test too few people, the delay in expanding testing to labs outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and problems in the supply chain. These mistakes have left us blind and badly behind the curve, and, for a few crucial weeks, they created a false sense of security. What we now know is that the coronavirus silently spread for several weeks, without us being aware of it and while we were doing nothing to stop it. Containment and mitigation efforts could have significantly slowed its spread at an early, critical point, but we frittered away that opportunity.

It didn’t create a false sense of security everywhere. Readers who have spent any time here know that writers here covered the epidemic with total seriousness, predicting this very outcome for at least a month. But the statement is correct with respect to the population generally. It is now just hitting home, and it did so over little more than 3 days. Amazing.

This will require a criminal investigation at some point. Mark my words, criminal prosecutions will come out of this much sooner than relationships with Russia or cheating on taxes. We need to know why the tests were held back. If tests were held back to keep the numbers down, that would be reckless endangerment or negligent homicide in some way – in my mind, off the top of my head:

We also know the World Health Organization had working tests that the United States refused, and researchers at a project in Seattle tried to conduct early tests for the coronavirus but were prevented from doing so by federal officials. (Doctors at the research project eventually decided to perform coronavirus tests without federal approval.)

But even callous political decisions to put off tests (if indeed that is what was done) are nothing compared to the outright lies spoken by the president of the United States. You surely remember a time when words out of the White House were checked, rechecked, checked again, because they moved markets, moved navies, and moved citizens – they were not always above board, there were agendas, but the American people were seldom lied to with such brazenness, such self-obsession, such conceit.

Yes, the Trump presidency is over, but it hardly feels victorious. It is sad. The cost we paid is huge, and yet nothing compared to the price that is coming, and that which we’ll pay to rebuild, just to get back to where we were, before someone declared it his job to take care of the “American carnage.”

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Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom