"Kids, Hide Your Eyes" -- Trump, the Un-Role Model During COVID-19

"The minute that we opened, it was like COVID didn't exist and people just forgot and, in some cases, are still forgetting,"

– Mayor of Miami Francis Suarez

The line between righteous and self-righteous is hard to discern in the best of times. In a pandemic – a time without a vaccine and a lack of treatment – it is evident recommendations to follow safety measures do not guarantee a significant part of the population will care about the safety of others.

You would think all Americans would gladly follow manageable safety measures during these deadly times – measures such as face masking, social distancing, and resisting gathering in large groups. However, for many, opening back up has proven meeting that obligation to be meaningless. Why are people so selfish and what could make more folks do these simple things to fight the virus?

Studies on disaster preparedness have found that one of the best ways to get other people to adopt new habits is to model them. Monica Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, says

“The literature shows that people will change their behavior if there are three conditions in place: (1) they know what to do, (2) why to do it and (3) they see other people like themselves also doing it. A crucial part of this is that authority figures, from political leaders to pastors, are all repeating the same message, to the point that people are 'swimming in a sea' of it.”

(Kathy Steinmetz.“Standing Too Close. Not Covering Coughs. If Someone Is Violating Social Distancing Rules, What Do You Do?” Time. April 13, 2020.)

“See other people like themselves doing it” – this is a straightforward, uncomplicated measure that encourages compliance. Modeling proper behavior is a key to stopping the spread of COVID-19.

Yet, America has a president who refuses to wear a face mask, urges less testing to trace the virus, and encourages gatherings of large crowds without social distancing for his political rallies. Donald Trump is a horrible model for those fighting the pandemic. In fact, he is the Anti-Representative of Proper Conduct.

Trump and his top advisers have repeatedly played down the threat posed to American lives by the coronavirus pandemic. In some of the most infamous instances, Trump predicted on February 26 that the number of COVID-19 infections in the U.S. "within a couple of days is going to be down close to zero," while Larry Kudlow, Trump's director of the National Economic Council, declared the virus had been "contained."

The White House has relied in part on a so-called "cubic model" devised by Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser, that showed COVID-19 deaths plummeting to zero by mid-May. Depending on whom you ask, the “cubic model” is either nonsense or not a forecast at all (or both). Vox wrote …

"That's not a prediction, but it is a confirmation that a purely self-interested president should try to do something to alter the trajectory of the death toll.”

(Rachael Maddow.“U.S. media: White House prefers a debunked model over real models for coronavirus policy.”CGTN. May 20, 2020.)

Trump has framed reopening as a decision between saving the U.S. economy or a handful of lives. And his supporters have followed. A growing contingent of Trump supporters have even pushed the narrative that health experts are part of a deep-state plot to hurt Trump’s reelection efforts by damaging the economy and keeping the United States shut down as long as possible.

Trump himself pushed this idea in the early days of the outbreak, calling warnings on coronavirus a kind of “hoax” meant to undermine him.

Long before the outbreak of COVID-19, a Quinnipiac University poll found

while 90 percent of voters said the president should be a good role model for children, only 29 percent said Trump was while 67 percent said he was not. This majority believed Trump lacked moral leadership.

Among those who said Trump was not a good role model were most Democrats, independents, men, women, the young and the old. The major exception: 72 percent of Republicans said Trump was a good role model and 22 percent said he was not.

Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll, told reporters …

"Only 27 percent of American voters say they are proud to have Donald Trump as president, while 53 percent say they are embarrassed--a 2-1 negative."

(Kenneth T. Walsh Poll: Trump a Bad Role Model.”

U.S. News. January 26, 2018.)

Since 2018, confidence for Trump has gotten even worse. The number of voters disapproving of the job President Trump is doing is at an all-time high, a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll (June 22 through June 25, 2020) finds.

Trump's approval rating sits at just 40% overall, while a record 58% disapprove. A whopping 49% of voters "strongly disapprove" of the job Trump is doing. That kind of intensity of disapproval is a record never before seen for this president or any past one.

Americans who are “swimming in the sea” of Trump's message about COVID-19 are risking drowning. Not only do they endanger their own health, but in the face of large, new outbreaks of the virus, they put their personal rights and individual desires over the health of their fellow man – while doing so, they trespass into the lives of countless others.

Why do they do this? In part, because they lack a proper role model as President of the United States. The president should possess the character and the temperament that other people can recognize and respect, no matter the person’s political affiliation. Donald Trump fails this presidential requirement. His immoral character fails every definition of “role model.”