Trump views coronavirus not as threat to public health but to re-election: Analyst

US President Donald Trump is mishandling the coronavirus outbreak because he views the spread of the flu-like pathogen “not as a threat to the health and security of the American people but as a threat to his own re-election,” an American political analyst says.

Trump on Friday declared a national emergency over the fast-spreading coronavirus, freeing up additional resources and federal funding of about $50 billion to fight the disease.

Trump made the announcement at a news conference at the White House, saying he was declaring the national emergency in order to "unleash the full power of the federal government.”

Trump declares national emergency over coronavirus

US President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency over the fast-spreading coronavirus.

He called on all US states to establish emergency centers to help fight the deadly virus.The US president has also imposed restrictions on travelers from China, Iran, the European Union’s Schengen Area as well as the UK and Ireland.

“The biggest problem we have is that Trump has seen this crisis not as a threat to the health and security of the American people but as a threat to his own re-election. When he first came to his desk he just tried to deny it, make it go away and, I think, he even fired some of the people that had brought it to his attention. But in every respect, he has tried to downplay this because he does see it as a threat to his re-election, particularly, because there are so many knock-on effects as we call them to this,” Charles Dunaway told Press TV in a phone interview on Saturday.

“What’s happening is that the markets have begun now to fall, and in reaction to this it becomes the kind of crisis that is going to threaten Trump’s ratings, his poll numbers among the people and eventually could cause him to lose the election in November — that’s what he is really concerned about rather than the health and safety of the American people, which he ought to be concerned about,”Dunaway added.

The American political commentator went on to say that the China-generated virus had taken a heavy toll on the US economy and businesses, therefore, raising the possibility of negatively swaying public opinion on the incumbent president’s performance.

“In the United States, because of the virus impact, businesses are closing, particularly restaurants, concert venues, anywhere that people gather in large numbers, movie theaters and so forth, are closing or they are practically empty, and so they are laying off their workers usually without pay and those workers now can’t buy anything, the stores are now sort of under attack because people are going into the stores and buying things in anticipation of a long quarantine period in their homes,” Dunaway said.

“This is very bad for the economy; this is going to be very bad for Trump because in the US, people associate the president with the state of the economy regardless of whether he has anything to do with it personally, that’s the way the Americans have generally voted, that is, if the economy is good, they will re-elect the president; but if it is bad, they will sometimes jettison that president,” he underlined.

The coronavirus, known as COVID-19, emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in Hubei Province late last year and is currently affecting 149 countries and territories across the globe. It has so far infected over 147,000 people and killed more than 5,500 others.

US military might have brought coronavirus to China’s Wuhan: Beijing

The Chinese government has suggested that the US military might have brought the new coronavirus to the Chinese city of Wuhan.

The World Health Organization has declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic.

As for the United States, 3,043 people have so far been tested positive for the coronavirus across the country and 60 people have died, according to worldometers.info.

US health experts have criticized the Trump administration for downplaying the epidemic and lagging behind in testing efforts, making it difficult to gauge the full scale of outbreaks in the United States and curtail transmission of the virus.

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