Again, not everyone in Hollywood thinks President Trump is doing a terrible job with coronavirus. Actor Dennis Quaid thinks the opposite even with alt-left, Trump-hating outlet The Daily Beast trying to sway him.
Despite Daily Beast Senior Entertainment Editor Marlow Stern’s pushing and prodding, the Midway and The Right Stuff actor stuck to his guns in insisting that the current administration was handling coronavirus well.
Stern prompted Quaid, saying, “I’m curious how you feel the president and federal government are handling the current pandemic? It does look like hospitals are criminally undersupplied right now.” Though, most mainstream entertainers would have finished the thought with, “UGH I KNOW, RIGHT? Trump sucks!” Quaid claimed, “Well, to tell you the truth, I think the president is handling it in a good way.”
Quaid explained himself. “We see him on television every day, he’s involved, and the travel ban early on was a great idea—which he did in spite of protest about that,” the actor elaborated. He also wanted to numb the shock of liberal readers, adding that he’s always considered himself an “independent.”
“I’m an independent—I’ve voted both ways throughout my life, swinging like a pendulum toward what the country needed at the time.” Dennis told Stern he felt that this is one of those times, like the Second World War, in which Americans may come out “more unified.” he explained, “I think this might be an opportunity for the country to come together again. World War II did that for that generation, and this might be our defining moment of a generation.”
Well that would be wonderful, but the Beast wasn’t going to let the actor have it that easy. Stern insisted the Trump administration made sure the country was unprepared for the outbreak: “in February, the Trump administration shipped 17.8 tons of medical supplies to China—knowing full well that this pandemic was about to hit our shores. They’d been briefed on it. So that’s a big reason why we’re so depleted right now.”
Quaid defended the president, saying, “We were trying to defeat the virus at its source at that time, and as I heard yesterday, Arnold Schwarzenegger and a few other people are taking planes over there and shipping a lot of it back.” He also made the point that the states could’ve been a little more autonomous in getting prepared. “The states are also responsible for having stockpiles of their own, according to their own needs,” he said.
Wow, a big-name actor who gets federalism?
Stern and Quaid went back and forth on numbers, debating on whether the administration is giving enough to plague-ravaged places like NYC. Marlowe argued it isn’t, while Quaid insisted that both NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and Trump are doing their best. “Cuomo is doing a great job out there working for the people of his state. And I think Trump, no matter what anybody thinks of him, is doing a good job at trying to get these states—and all of the American people—what they need.” He also praised Trump for working on getting “our economy together” at the same time.
One last time, Stern insisted that the U.S. government didn’t take “swift action” on the outbreak, to which Quaid responded, “Oh, I think that we did too though. As soon as we found out what the threat was… China wasn’t really revealing to the rest of the world what was going on.”
“There was no warning whatsoever,” he added. Though this will be debated ad nauseam til the end of time perhaps. It’s nice to know a big name entertainer isn’t so quick to condemn President Trump.
