OK first of all, it's not "politicizing the crisis" to monitor (or even criticize!) what your elected leaders are doing in a democracy. It's citizenship. It is self-government. It is your duty. It does not go on pause during a pandemic. You elected someone to represent your interests in government, and your job is to keep an eye on them and make sure they are doing so. If they are doing a bad job, or misrepresenting the situation, call it out. Your health and safety are on the line. That the situation is scary is not a reason to suddenly trust everything politicians say, especially if they have an extensive record of lying and incompetent administration.

Whew. With that out of the way, let's talk about the president's speech Thursday night. Just to reiterate, up to this point, the president's response has primarily been to suggest the virus will just go away miraculously, that people were going to work when they had the virus and it's no big deal, and that we are on the cusp of having an available vaccine. None of these ideas reflect reality. Also, he went to the CDC and made an ass of himself. He did institute a ban on travel from China which may have delayed the spread here, but we have not used the time to level-up our response capacity. We don't have enough ICU beds. We don't have enough tests. We are not prepared.

The president began well enough last night, sticking to the facts of what's actually happening, but eventually he went into his stump speech about how great the economy is and all that. Don't need it, dude. The most glaring issue, however, was that the president did not mention testing at all. The biggest problem we have is that there are not enough tests, so we don't have an accurate picture of how many people have it and where. The key to South Korea's successful response has been widespread testing. No mention of tests.

There was a ban on European travel, however, which Trump's own former homeland security adviser is on record as saying will not be effective: "There’s little value to European travel restrictions," Tom Bossert wrote on Twitter. "Poor use of time & energy. Earlier, yes. Now, travel restrictions/screening are less useful. We have nearly as much disease here in the US as the countries in Europe. We MUST focus on layered community mitigation measures-Now!"

Maybe it’s worth keeping an eye on how this guy is handling things. JIM WATSON Getty Images

The important thing for the president, however, was to frame this as a "foreign virus"—that is, an external threat that can be stopped with walls and travel bans. The solution to everything is pulling up the drawbridge, even when the invaders are already inside the castle. Even worse, he fucked up his announcement of the ban. The president said it applies to freight, meaning it constitutes a shutdown of a huge share of our trade with the European Union. This was false, as the White House was forced to make clear after. Dow Jones futures plummeted after the speech, hitting the eight-percent "circuit-breaker," and the market opened down 1,700 points Thursday.

It does appear that testing is finally beginning to ramp up, though it's still meager. We basically have not begun to scale up the capacity of our hospitals and other facilities which will likely see a huge influx of patients over the next week or two. This is reality. It is not some media vendetta against the president. Maybe it's time to consider that much of the other criticism he gets is not an attempt to score cheap political points, but an effort to do our duties as citizens and monitor the behavior of public servants. Maybe it's time to admit that the presidency is not an easy job that any shmuck from the teevee screen can do.

When you run for president, you're applying for a job. Part of it is crisis-management. Now there's a crisis, we ought to watch how the president manages it. We have been blessed that only a few genuine external crises have struck while this guy is in the big chair. This is the biggest test yet, except there isn't enough testing.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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