Today’s article is intended to bring some degree of clarity to President Trump’s handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, specifically in regards to what the President has accomplished, but also by way of explanation as to why he continues to be attacked incessantly by the Democrats and the progressive mass media.

Regarding the underlying motive for the attacks, it is as it has always been since before the election of 2016 – to weaken and then destroy this President by any means whatsoever. Truth was necessarily the first victim of this stratagem: Remember the Russian collusion investigation, which was mercilessly pursued by the FBI, once the most respected law enforcement agency in the land?  The FBI had by then been corrupted to the point that it mercilessly pursued a criminal investigation of a presidential candidate and later a sitting President, knowing in advance that the underlying “evidence” had been falsified by a political operative working for the Democrats.

Nor can we forget the recent presidential impeachment, which was not warranted even if one completely ignored the well-reasoned arguments of the President’s many defenders. Nancy Pelosi knew perfectly well that a presidential impeachment would further inflame the country’s severe partisan divide and would further damage its governing institutions. She also knew that there was essentially no chance of a conviction in the Senate, but the brutal logic of the Democrats’ stratagem dictated that further damage to the country not only had to be risked, but was actually required if the President were to be politically harmed. In the end the President does not appear to have actually been harmed, but the country has most certainly been damaged, as you will read below.

Because there was another, unintended consequence of the Democrats’ ruthless adherence to this political savagery: Namely, that as the House impeachment farce faded into Speaker Pelosi’s unprecedented one month delay in referring the articles of impeachment to the Senate, and the Senate trial then wended its way on to the inevitable conclusion and talk show aftermath, the government and the public’s attention was diverted for over five months from the slowly mounting evidence of a potentially serious outbreak of a new illness in faraway east central China.

Many on the Left have tried to fault the President for his response to this crisis. I would suggest they turn their ire first against the Chinese Communist Party for withholding information, then suppressing dissenters from the official narrative, and finally lying about virtually every facet of the illness and its progression through the Chinese and then the world population. They should then direct their fury upon the Progressive mass media, which was focused elsewhere until very late in February- first on the impeachment facade, then on the Democrat primaries, but always on every conceivable attack against Donald Trump, because those issues sold newspapers and advertising.

Even so, the President and his administration acted decisively. Fortunate indeed was the action taken early on by the alert officials at the Centers for Disease Control, part of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, who issued the first travel notice for Wuhan on January 6th. This action was followed in short order by the establishment of a Coronavirus management system and increasingly severe warnings to travelers and state and local health departments alike.

Before January was out, the President had issued travel restrictions, halted flights from China (one of the first world leaders to do so), and established the Coronavirus task force, which remains in charge of the nation’s response to this pandemic threat. Amazingly, this was all accomplished during or in the aftermath of the President’s farcical impeachment trial in the Senate.

Since then the President has greatly increased the amount of protective gear, Coronavirus tests, and ventilators available to healthcare personnel, with far more supplies on the way; passed the $2.2T CARES Act (that’s $2,200,000,000,000 for those of you who want to know what two trillion dollars looks like in Arabic numerals) to provide near immediate relief to workers and their families, students, and businesses, to avert the collapse of our economy; and focused the entire might of the federal government on fighting this pandemic and developing vaccines and cures in the shortest possible time.

The truth is that this President has used his amazing energy and business talents to mobilize America’s public and private resources in ways that no one without his understanding of private enterprise ever could. Bernie Sanders, the Socialist and odds-on early favorite to be the Democrat Party’s nominee for President, wouldn’t have a clue about what to do or how to go about doing it. And that other guy, the presumptive favorite to be the nominee of the Democrat Party for President? What’s his name, anyway? I seem to have forgotten it. Where would we be right now if he were our President? Now that’s a truly scary thought…

LOUIS GURVICH, Chairman
Republican Party of Louisiana