El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago scheduled a press conference at 6 p.m. on Wednesday to discuss the crisis surrounding the worldwide outbreak of the coronavirus. Since the president* doesn’t know anything about anything, and since he’s pretty much fired or sidelined anyone who does, the press conference promises to be an epic display of Adderall-paced ignorance. Which is entertaining when the subject is a less serious one, but watching this guy pretend he’s an epidemiologist because of his mad Article II skillz portends nothing but doom alone.

There is no worse time for this country to experience a worldwide pandemic than during an election year. The temptation for candidates to gin up vote-sucking terror, or to blame the disease on their political rivals, is too goddamn overwhelming for many of them to resist. And given the attention that cable and local news pay to political campaigns, mixing an epidemic into the coverage can turn television news into a dangerous fount of misinformation.

For example, in October of 2014, just as the final midterm campaign of Barack Obama’s time in office was hitting the homestretch, an Ebola outbreak in Africa touched the United States. Unreasoning fear became just another talking point. Senators from both parties called for absolute travel bans from affected nations. Several senators used the fear of Ebola to demagogue the immigration issue at the southern border, even though very few refugees from, say, the Democratic Republic of the Congo choose Juarez as their point of entry. From ABC News:



But is Ebola a legitimate campaign issue or are campaigns engaging in fear mongering? Steven Greene, a professor of political science at NC State University, says it’s a little bit of both. “I think there are very important issues of public policies related to Ebola that we should have a mature discussion about, but the truth is we don’t have mature discussion about anything in the campaign season so whatever political discussion about this is most likely going to be fear mongering,” Greene said.



Heckling from the sidelines was one Donald J. Trump, a New York real-estate grifter still smarting from the whooping Obama gave him in front of the Washington elite. From Business Insider:



"Ebola patient will be brought to the U.S. in a few days - now I know for sure that our leaders are incompetent. KEEP THEM OUT OF HERE!"...When the Ebola panic was growing as cases spread in West Africa, Trump called on Obama to cancel flights coming out of the region. "I am starting to think that there is something seriously wrong with President Obama's mental health," Trump tweeted in 2014. "Why won't he stop the flights. Psycho!”



As it happens, I got caught up in one of these episodes while traveling around with Joni Ernst in Iowa during her first Senate run. Thanks to Ben Terris of the Washington Post, who was standing about three feet away from me, the country got to hear about it, too, and the folks at Raw Story archived it for entertainment purposes only.

At a campaign stop in Newton, Iowa, Ernst complained that President Obama isn’t leading America, calling him “apathetic.”

Following the event, Ernst came face to face with Charles Pierce from Esquire magazine who pressed her over her claims about the president in an exchange also documented by Ben Terris of the Washington Post. “He is just standing back and letting things happen, he is reactive rather than proactive,” Ernst told the crowd. “With Ebola, we see he’s very hands-off. He’s not leading. He’s not leading.”

And now there’s another healthcare crisis, only this time Trump is president* and running for re-election, and Ernst is, too, and none of this makes me feel optimistic at all.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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