Former news anchor Dan Rather is weighing in on President Donald Trump’s leadership amid the coronavirus pandemic.
MSNBC host Joy Reid weighed in with a perspective of Trump’s approach, noting that it appears the president’s idea is to make Americans believe that the number of coronavirus cases, the rising death toll, and historic unemployment rates “all fine.” She also noted that the “happy talk” signals that the situation is not as bad as it may seem.
Rather responded in agreement saying, “Well, that’s exactly what it is.”
He continued, “It’s a fool-power effort using the pomp and circumstance of the presidency to accentuate the positive and try to eliminate the negative, or at least to diminish the negative. This is right out of the Norman Vincent Peale playbook.”
Rather went on to explain how Peale’s beliefs appear to coincide with Trump’s approach to the coronavirus.
“Donald Trump and his father both were, I would say, followers of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and his work and it’s the belief that if you just keep saying positive things that people will at least begin to believe things are positive whether they are or not,” Rather said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C621NUhTBIA
Rather stressed the importance of presenting a clear, objective view of the coronavirus instead of normalizing mass deaths. He also accused the president of downplaying the impact of the pandemic for political benefit.
“We cannot, we must not normalize thousands of deaths which is what the president is attempting to do for his own political purposes,” Rather said. “He’s accentuating the politics and diminishing the science for his own political benefit.”
According to Rather, the president seems relatively unfazed by the historic death toll.
“I can’t think of another American president — or modern president or before the modern presidency — who went through his whole presidency with such a lacking expression of empathy,” Rather said.
Concerns about the long-term economical impacts of the pandemic are continuing to mount. However, Trump insists the economy will make a rapid recovery and argues the death toll is far less than initial projections if no steps were taken to prevent the spread of the virus.
There are more than 1.3 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S., and the death toll is at 80,870, as of Monday morning.