The Washington Post editorial board pulled no punches with its prediction about how President Donald Trump’s haphazard handling of the coronavirus outbreak will play out.
“Mr Trump’s counter messaging does more than cause confusion,” the newspaper warned in an editorial published Monday.
“It will cost lives,” it said.
Trump has peddled multiple falsehoods and repeatedly sought to downplay the threat of the virus, which has infected more than 700 people in the U.S. and killed 26 nationwide.
In its editorial — titled “Trump is endangering lives with his contempt for truth” — the newspaper’s board bashed Trump’s “constant minimizing of the seriousness of the crisis” and for being “more concerned with his own image than the well-being of the nation,” citing the president’s suspicion of federal agencies who should be working together to combat the crisis.
“President Trump has spent three years demeaning and weakening the U.S. government,” the paper wrote. “Now that the United States desperately needs that government to function well, we are paying a steep price.”
The New York Times opinion columnist Jennifer Senior in a similarly scathing column declared Trump “unfit” to lead the country through the crisis, calling his narcissism “a grave danger to our health.”
“When it comes to Trump, truth, decency and self-possession have been in quarantine from the start,” Senior added.