The Trump Presidency has been a chaotic one. For the past three years, the world has changed a lot, thanks to his entry into 1610, Pennsylvania Avenue. Till date, he has not formed his entire Cabinet, even as November, 2020 elections are round the bend. He began his Presidency with a bang, firing James Comey, FBI Chief, on his disinclination to swear ‘person loyalty to Trump’. Coney has captured it all in his “Higher Loyalty” to the nation and its Constitution.
That was only the beginning of Trump’s “You’re fired” from his reality TV show The Apprentice. He has fired a whole host of entities- Secretary of State, Defence Secretary, White House Chief of Staff, Media and Communications Director, Attorney General, his own personal physician and counsel too. We can make of List of firings to compile a Tome.
It is nothing new. But this is truly bizarre. The world is in a lockdown. Twenty thousand and more Americans, more than Italy and Spain have lost, have died in the Pandemic and the curve is not flattening yet. Trump started off with “Coronavirus is a box, a Democrats’ conspiracy’ theory until scientists and medical professionals were forced to hold his hands, legs, mouth, with or without a mask. Dr. Anthony Fauci is the 80 year old Doctor who has held office for 36 years in government service handling many a viral epidemic as SARS, H1N1, Ebola and any other. He is on the Coronavirus Task Force and is the ‘sane and solitary voice looming above the cacophony’.
Dr. Fauci has been standing alongside, in the White House briefings held court by Donald J Trump. The good doctor has gone on record in print and electronic media that ‘it is the virus that will determine the timeline for opening the economy’. Now, he went to State of the Union Show with Jake Tapper CNN on 12th April, 2020- that ‘obviously we had shit everything down from the beginning the fatalities would have been far lesser but we delayed as there was a push back from the internal divisions led from the very top’.
It is too obvious that Dr. Fauci was pointing to Trump as the cause for delay. Trump does not like it one bit. Trump was called a ‘moron’ by Rex Tillerson, his first Secretary of State, of course, fired. Now, Trump has been called as ‘nuts’ by his so called more loyal than the king Moscow Mitch (as he christened on media) , Senate Majority leader who holds all the aces for legislations in the Congress.
Read this fascinating piece in The NewYorker – https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-mitch-mcconnell-became-trumps-enabler-in-chief revealing what Mitch has been up to and even he, the so called for hard acolyte has called a Trump ‘ Nuts’. Donald J Trump has now retweeted a tweet that Dr. Anthony Fauci deserves to be ‘fired’ for his laying the blame for delayed lockdown and huge number of deaths on the lap of Trump. It would be one helluva decision to take even as the world is fighting the invisible enemy. Would Trump go ahead and commit harakiri? Don’t rule it out. He is far more moronic or nutsy than he has proved to be. Forget not that after the impeachment enquiry failed on the Senate Floor, Trump fired some witnesses and Inspector General who rolled the dice first, from their positions, and this happened in those Pandemic times.
World waits with bated breath if Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director, National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases, who has continued for 36 long years, across 7 Presidents, and not allowed to go home, till date, may well get fired by Donald J Trump, even as America and the world is still waging an uphill battle against Covid-19.
As Bob Woodward, he of the Carl Bernstein twin of Watergate fame, said, “Put nothing beyond Trump. He instills fear and his narcissistic tendencies can overwhelm him at any moment of the day as any firing is just a tweet away”. Dr. Fauci is not fighting America’s fight. He is inspirational to the entire world in his unrelenting struggle to defeat the virus and its viral impact. Heaven help, if Donald J Trump were to live up to his name and fame and shout ‘You’re fired’ to Dr. Anthony Fauci and asks him to go packing home, and in the midst of this war on virus, which none of his 6 predecessors in the White House ever got the gumption and courage or idiocy to utter. It would tragedy compounded by eternal shame.
(Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan- Author is practising advocate in the Madras High Court)
