How Is Biden Leading Trump?!

[Dill]

(08-30-2020, 09:53 PM)bfine32 Wrote: The post I quoted is an example. "Trump kills Americans because he doesn't do enough about Covid". 
The President doesn't pass laws. What measures have the folks that actually pass laws done to curb the spread?

POTUS has constantly said he defers to Governors which is what exactly he should do. 

Violence in Portland, Trump sends in Federal Troops: "Trump needs to stay out of it and let local elected officials handle it"

A global pandemic hits the US and Trump defers to local elected officials; "Trump should do more at a federal level"

Seems like a tough to please crowd and one that gives 2 shits about answers. 

1. Not sure exactly which post you are refering to--the one making military power a grouind of effective COVOD policy? But noting that Trump's bad decisions regarding the pandemic could be a reason for the high body count does not illustrate some misunderstanding of checks and balances. The office of the presidency, with its special reactive powers, was created so a government could react to NATIONAL emergencies faster than a legislature. E.g., if Mexico bombed Phoenix, the US could not wait for Congress to "pass laws" to begin protecting the US. The commander in chief has the power to react immediatetly to protect the US. Same for a pandemic.

2. When the current pandemic arrived, Trump styled himself a "wartime president," presumably with similar reactive powers. You say he should have "deferred to governors" under this national threat. That would be like letting the governor of Arizona handle the attack from Mexico on his own. Imagine if Trump's response to a military attack on US soil like that was to implement a market so states could compete against one another to purchase ammunition.  

3. Protecting the US from a nationwide threat is the job of the federal government; sending the military or feds unasked into local/state jurisdictions is not; it violates the principle of "two systems" and respect for states' autonomy.  So yes, a national response to the pandemic is required, just as a national/international response to the 9/11 attacks was required. Bush did not leave it to the governor of New York or the Mayor of NYC to invade Afghanistan. But a federal response was not required in Lafayette Square; protecting federal buildings in Portland had a rationale, at least, but bled into unindentifiable federal troops cruising the streets far from federal buildings and yanking people in without probable cause, then letting them go hours later having no charges lodged against them. And it led to Trump begging states to let him order the military in.

Your Pandemic/Portland contradiction appears to rest on a misunderstanding of Executive powers and of the difference between federal and state powers--so you assume Trump is "damned if does" when he wants to violate state's rights and "damned if he doesn't" when he shifts his primary responsiblity to lead a national response to the pandemic onto the local/state level.