With what we know about how Trump has been
bungling the response to the coronavirus pandemic, I don't necessarily think it's a good thing to portray him as some type of unfairly overburdened leader. But that's what the Family Research Council and its president, Tony Perkins, are
attempting to do:
There's hardly a busier, more burdened man in America right now than President Trump. And yet on Friday, when he heard that Vice President Mike Pence was about to jump on an FRC conference call with 700 pastors, he asked if he could join. Hearing his voice was a surprise, even to me -- but hearing his earnest desire to stand with the faith leaders of America in crisis certainly wasn't.
"When I told the president I was going to be speaking to all of you," Mike explained, "[he was] in the midst of an extraordinarily busy day. [But] he looked at me and said, 'I have to find time. I need to find time.'" To the president, he went on, "the prayers of the people on this call mean [everything] to him..." So despite everything facing America, the two most important leaders of this nation stopped everything to pray with the people on the ground, who are ministering to their communities.
It's a "wild world," the president started. The virus, he said, "came upon us so suddenly. And we were doing better than we've ever done before as a country in terms of the economy -- and then, all of the sudden, we got hit with this. So we had to close it down," he said wistfully. "We're actually paying a big price to close it down. Never happened before." But, President Trump insisted, "I think we're going to come back stronger than ever before."
I apologize to those who will accuse me of being petty, but I don't intend to change. It's not right to use prayer requests as an attempt to absolve Trump from the mess he helped make, including not challenging his
inaccurate statement that the coronavirus came suddenly.
In fact, its downright sleazy.
Pray for our nation if you want. And by all means pray for Trump if you feel the need. But don't even attempt to write off, push away, or ignore the many ways he
mismanaged this disaster. Don't even attempt to pretend that Trump had this situation under control from the beginning when he kept
shifting positions from claiming that his administration had this problem under control, to claiming that it was a Democratic hoax, to finally acknowledging the seriousness of the situation.
And don't even pretend that he didn't attempt to
absolve himself from the responsibility which came with him being elected - and I swear I will never EVER know why - as the commander-in-chief of this nation.
We aren't stupid In spite of the purveyors of propaganda working overtime, the majority of Americans aren't going to buy this attempt to transform Trump from Mr. Magoo to Abraham Lincoln.
If Trump wants prayer, maybe he should publicly acknowledge his lack of leadership thus far. If he can't do that - and we all know he can't - then at least FRC shouldn't aid and abet any attempt to make him look like a credible leader.
Because that's the one thing he hasn't been throughout this mess.
