For Want of a President, a Nation Was Lost

On September 11, 2001, early 3,000 lives were lost in America's worst terrorist attack in our history.  Today, we grieve for those people who were injured or died in the two World Trade Towers, in the Pentagon, and all of those First Responders who worked tirelessly to save lives.

Bob Woodward's new book, Rage, opens in the Oval Office, on January 28, 2019, where two top officials from the president's national security team are telling him that COVID-19 is a major threat to the United States and far worse than the flu. 

"This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency," says Robert O'Brien, the national security adviser (Trump's fourth). "This is going to be the roughest thing you face."

Obrien's statement makes the president's head "pop up," but it is immediately seconded by O'Brien's principal deputy, Matt Pottinger, whom Woodward reports was also present. Pottinger is a China scholar and former intelligence officer in the Marines who had lived in China seven years and spoke fluent Mandarin.

From that moment until today, September 11, 2020,it has created what is now the absolutely worst mishandled virus attack by a president in our history.  We have 4% of the world's total population and yet we have more than 20% of the world's deaths from this pandemic.  We have a president and his administration that didn't develop  a national plan to fight this virus, and they still haven't.  The president began by calling it a hoax, graduated his incompetence to say it would "just go away...soon," and finally began assessing blame to others for his inability to act.

The president was recorded by Woodward through eight sessions of interviews.  Today, Trump's only explanation for refusing to act was, "If Woodward thought the virus was so bad, he should have told someone - immediately."  The president cannot even face the reality that the responsibility was his, alone.

The moral of this tragic story is this:  As of January 28, 2019, America has been continuously lied to, deceived by, and tragically ignored by their President. According to medical experts across the country, "if the president (as other world leaders have done) had begun to lock down this nation when he was first warned of the catastrophe, we could have saved tens of thousands of lives."  But, to the president, that kind of "bad news" would be harmful to his campaign team,  his inner-circle, and supporters across the country.  Therefore, the re-election of this president is paramount - evidently even at the cost of lives!

For want of a re-election, countless lives were lost.  

For want of a president, consider the cost!