KEY POINTS

  • Donald Trump's performance amid coronavirus outbreak is jarring
  • Donald Trump's tyical modus operandi is to bluff and blame
  • People want Donald Trump to resign

Donald Trump’s uses his typical modus operandi in battling coronavirus.

The public has mixed opinion about the president’s war against COVID-19. Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times said that his response to the pandemic proves that his performance is “jarring.”

“Mr. Trump’s performance on the national stage in recent weeks has put on display the traits that Democrats and some Republicans consider so jarring — the profound need for personal praise, the propensity to blame others, the lack of human empathy, the penchant for rewriting history, the disregard for expertise, the distortion of facts, the impatience with scrutiny or criticism. For years, skeptics expressed concern about how he would handle a genuine crisis threatening the nation, and now they know,” Baker and Haberman wrote.

According to Trump’s biographer Michael D’Antonio, when the POTUS faces a problem, he seeks to cheat or fix the outcome ahead of time to show a narrative that he is the winner. Trump reportedly does this strategy when he has feuds with celebrities or contests over ratings and no one checks his claims. He stressed that Trump’s “bluster and bragging worked” until the coronavirus pandemic became a thing.

D’Antonio said that Trump used the same approach in the beginning, but he couldn’t just brag or bluster his way out while people are dying. He believed that the data forced Trump to change.

Jack O’Donnell, the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, shared the same opinion as D’Antonio when it comes to how Trump faces problems.

“The typical modus operandi from him is to bluff, is to fake, is to deny,” he said.

O’Donnell recalled an incident when the POTUS was about to open Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City in 1990 and ran into trouble with the authorities, he made his way out by bluffing them.

“He told them I was an expert in operations and I could fix this. And they believed him. I was dumbfounded. He was completely bluffing them.”

However, Trump’s technique to bluff around no longer works for many people. In fact, several are already calling him to resign immediately. Many were also irked when he was caught on cam sleeping during a coronavirus meeting and it prompted his critics to ask him to just quit the presidency.

US President Donald Trump says he does not know if his hotel business will benefit  from a massive government economic rescue program under consideration
US President Donald Trump says he does not know if his hotel business will benefit from a massive government economic rescue program under consideration AFP / MANDEL NGAN