Stand by for yet another "inflection point" in which it is finally, finally OVER for the Trump presidency. Yes, liberals and Never Trumpers thought they had reached that "inflection point" several times over the past few years of this administration but now it must really really be over for Trump due to the coronavirus. Or at least that is the latest political gospel conventional wisdom according to Never Trumper Peter Wehner, a former Bush White House aide.
Wehner declared it all over in Friday's Atlantic magazine which boldly declared, "The Trump Presidency Is Over." Why? Because of the coronavirus outbreak which has brought us to Wehner's Holy Grail of the sacred "inflection point" marking the end of the Trump administration:
The coronavirus is quite likely to be the Trump presidency’s inflection point, when everything changed, when the bluster and ignorance and shallowness of America’s 45th president became undeniable, an empirical reality, as indisputable as the laws of science or a mathematical equation.
Yes, we have finally reached the much sought after "inflection point"...at least according to Wehner. Of course the coronavirus inflection point should not be confused with Wehner's Mueller Report inflection point when he announced on MSNBC's Morning Joe show in June 2018 that for Trump "it will get worse" when the Mueller Report comes out. Nor should it be confused with Wehner's impeachment inflection point of a month ago when he wrote in the Atlantic that the impeachment trial means the "Downfall of the Republican Party."
Wehner is careful to warn liberals not to politicize coronavirus outbreak as a weapon to attack Trump...before then absurdly going on to use coronavirus as a political weapon to attack Trump.
To be sure, the president isn’t responsible for either the coronavirus or the disease it causes, COVID-19, and he couldn’t have stopped it from hitting our shores even if he had done everything right. Nor is it the case that the president hasn’t done anything right; in fact, his decision to implement a travel ban on China was prudent. And any narrative that attempts to pin all of the blame on Trump for the coronavirus is simply unfair. The temptation among the president’s critics to use the pandemic to get back at Trump for every bad thing he’s done should be resisted, and schadenfreude is never a good look.
...the avalanche of false information from the president has been most alarming of all. It’s been one rock slide after another, the likes of which we have never seen. Day after day after day he brazenly denied reality, in an effort to blunt the economic and political harm he faced. But Trump is in the process of discovering that he can’t spin or tweet his way out of a pandemic. There is no one who can do to the coronavirus what Attorney General William Barr did to the Mueller report: lie about it and get away with it.
...To make matters worse, the president delivered an Oval Office address that was meant to reassure the nation and the markets but instead shook both.
Somehow Wehner seems to have missed the huge stock market rally on Friday when the Dow surged almost 2000 points.
Wehner concludes by attempting to assure us, and perhaps himself, that it is finally, really, absolutely OVER for Trump:
It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the con man behind the curtain. The president, enraged for having been unmasked, will become more desperate, more embittered, more unhinged. He knows nothing will be the same. His administration may stagger on, but it will be only a hollow shell. The Trump presidency is over.
Exit question: How long before Peter Wehner discovers a new "inflection point" that means the end of the Trump presidency?
