The presidency is such a unique office largely because of the chief executive’s many and varied responsibilities. He is head of state, head of government, commander in chief, and is responsible for seeing that the laws are “faithfully executed. The president has to be the CEO, a diplomat, an orator, a teacher, a wise man, and it helps if he has some skill as an actor.
But I don’t recall reading anywhere in the Constitution that the president has to be the nation’s griever-in-chief.
Donald Trump has come under fire from the left for not showing any emotion about the coronavirus dead. The president has apparently disappointed his critics because he doesn’t wallow in sorrow or publicly emote. Liberals believe if you don’t actually, physically show your concern, you don’t care. How else can you separate yourself from ordinary people unless you really, really care about your fellow man — and let everyone know it?
It’s silly and stupid and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer may be the silliest and stupidest of all.
To President Trump:@SpeakerPelosi & I are writing to request that you order flags to be flown at half staff on all public buildings on the sad day of reckoning when we reach 100,000 deaths.
It would serve as a national expression of grief so needed by everyone in our country. pic.twitter.com/4zH1s8JtAL
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) May 21, 2020
Why 100,000 dead? Why not 105,000? Or wait and see if we get to 200,000? The answer is simple; it’s an election year and Schumer wants to stand on the dead bodies of Americans to make the idiotic political point that Trump is responsible for every death in the United States from the coronavirus.
Does Schumer also want a formal, solemn ceremony on the White House lawn complete with the Marine band playing funeral dirges and Trump greeting mourning families? He’s not going to get it. But that doesn’t mean Trump hasn’t already expressed his sorrow for the dead.
In an interview on ABC News earlier this month, the president expressed his heartfelt emotion at the passing of so many Americans.
During an interview on “World News Tonight,” ABC News anchor David Muir noted that more than 70,000 Americans have now died from the coronavirus — more than in the Vietnam War — and questioned Trump on his message for affected families.
“I want to say I love you. I want to say that we’re doing everything we can,” Trump said. “I want to just say to the people that have lost family … and the people that have suffered so badly and just made it, just made it, that we love you. We’re with you. We’re working with you.”
Incredibly, liberals have taken to dissecting the coronavirus briefings that Trump had at one time and determined that he didn’t express enough empathy for the dead.
Multiple analyses of Trump’s once-daily press conferences showed the president spent a small fraction of the time conveying condolences for victims’ families, instead defending his administration’s efforts to combat the disease.
The New York Times in a story published last week noted that Trump had largely left the “grieving to others” as he focuses on the coronavirus’s political ramifications.
Ordinary people— those who aren’t rabid, anti-Trump liberals — don’t need a president to instruct them how to grieve.
At one time in American history, stoicism was seen as a virtue. Grieving is still not a public act, at least for normal people. Perhaps those who crave attention need to have others reaffirm their grief. Public grief, as when a North Korean leader dies, is obscene.
Let’s leave grieving as a private affair and not emote all over the place in a display of insincere sorrow.
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