President Donald Trump is a failure and that makes him a loser, but worse, it makes the U.S. a loser.

Trump's response to the coronavirus, has shown that he is incapable of dealing with a real live crisis and in the past several weeks, he has lost time in fighting the pandemic by thinking that he could lie and obfuscate his way through the crisis by saying that he had everything under control.

In fact, he had nothing under control, but con man that he is, he tried bluffing his way through as he has bluffed his way through life. His true, low character has become obvious to all, even some of his cult followers, in this pandemic. The agencies that in any rational governmental system would have signalled that coronavirus would be a serious threat to a nation's stability have been largely neutered by Trump, who has cut budgets to the bone, when he hasn't eliminated the agencies altogether.

His speech last week that was designed to reassure the American people that steps were being taken to curb the spread of the virus and that testing will be done for anyone who wants to be tested, as soon as the millions of tests needed are produced. His delivery of the speech was given as though he was asleep and reading from the teleprompter was a chore that he was not up for, although it could have been given by a fifth grader with greater understanding of the gravity of the crisis. It just seemed that he didn't want to be there at all, because it proved that his initial response to cornavirus was more than inadequate. It was a tragedy.

If anything proved that someone was not ready for tackling a crisis, it was the president during the past several weeks, stumbling about as if he were in a pitch dark room trying to find his way to the door. He has yet to find it and he keeps overriding his health experts, who have repeatedly had to inform the American people that what the president just said is not quite accurate and that things are going to get worse before they get better. At any rate, they seem to be saying, pay no attention to that man playing president behind the curtain, because he doesn't understand what's happening to the nation in dealing with the coronavirus.

There are some observers, even among Republicans, who are stating unequivocally that this crisis is the end of the Trump presidency and, even, the end of the Republican Party, since its members in power have had everything to do with his continuing in office. Despite that most of them must know the damage and destructionTrump has wreaked on the presidency, his new-found party, and the nation.

Peter Wehner, who identifies himself as a lifelong Republican in The Atlantic this month, said his Republican friends were shocked when he told them that he would never vote for Trump. When they asked why, he said he told them: “...Trump is fundamentally unfit—intellectually, morally, temperamentally, and psychologically—for office. For me, that is the paramount consideration in electing a president, in part because at some point it’s reasonable to expect that a president will face an unexpected crisis—and at that point, the president’s judgment and discernment, his character and leadership ability, will really matter.”

He wrote: Mr. Trump has no desire to acquaint himself with most issues, let alone master them is how I put it four years ago. “No major presidential candidate has ever been quite as disdainful of knowledge, as indifferent to facts, as untroubled by his benightedness.” I added this:

Mr. Trump’s virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability, demagogy, solipsism and vindictiveness would do more than result in a failed presidency; it could very well lead to national catastrophe. The prospect of Donald Trump as commander in chief should send a chill down the spine of every American.

The crisis of which he wrote has come to pass and it has endangered the entirety of the American people. The coronavirus is not only the first real crisis that Trump has faced and failed (he hasn't really faced a crisis as president that was not of his own making), but he has paved the way for the virus to have free rein to savage the populace. Trump is not the first one to cut budgets of public health agencies that normally would be mobilized to stave off the onslaught of coronavirus, but he is the first to make a concerted effort to neuter or eliminate agencies of government that might be useful in a public health emergency. On that, the crisis of coronavirus rests heavily on his shoulders.

The effects of the steps that are being taken by governments and citizens all across the country are being felt by everyone and those who have taken those steps have been without the leadership from the national government that a well-functioning government should provide. Trump has failed in that and it is largely because of his low character. He has lied so much in his life and to the American people since he entered the White House that few can believe him. It has been pointed out that, on occasion, he has lied when the truth would have served him better. But that's the way it is with pathological liars: they can't tell the truth.

State and local governments have closed schools, restaurants (except for takeout in most cases), many businesses, theaters, and even churches, temples, and mosques, cultural houses and sports events. Wherever there might be large gatherings of people, events have come mostly to a halt. Sporting events at the college level have been conducted without audiences and movie theaters have cut their capacity in half or more, so that patrons can keep 3-6 feet from one another. In a word, life has changed for Americans and there's nothing that Trump can do, unless it's to keep his mouth shut and his thumbs at his side (no Twitter action), and let the experts in the field of epidemiology and public health take over informing the people about what is happening.

That the U.S. has no industrial policy that would include the creation of jobs and maintaining workers in their jobs in a national emergency is evident to most who work for wages. How do workers who own their own homes or live in moderately-priced apartments survive a shutdown of their workplaces in cases like the coronavirus crisis. How do they pay for a roof over their heads, how do they pay for food for their families, and how do they pay for a decent livestyle? One proposal is that the federal government provide sustenance for these families in the way of continued paychecks, just as it has provided trillions of dollars to bail out big industries and corporations. It wouldn't take as much money to do that for the people, as it has taken for the bailouts of giant corporations. It's a question of the Congress and White House having the will to do it, but don't look to them to do it without relentless pressure from the people.

What is surprising is that the Republicans in the Senate seem to be taking the lead of their president and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to approve money for every adult, to help carry them through however long it takes to shelter-in-place in trying to outlast the virus. This is a considerable change of heart for the GOP, since the party usually takes care of Corporate America and the 1 percent before anyone else. McConnell, opening the Senate on Tuesday, said, “The Senate will not adjourn until we have passed significant and bold new steps above and beyond what the House has passed to help our strong nation and our strong underlying economy weather this storm.”

Excuse us for wondering, but did McConnell and the rest of his party just discover that the economy is only doing well for the rich and their corporations? You can tell that neither he nor his fellow Republicans have spoken with many wage workers in their determination that the U.S. economy is just humming along. They should speak with the 40 percent who are struggling to survive or are already under the poverty line.

It's unlikely that the payments to every adult will be $1,000 as has been suggested, but it will turn out to be something that may help make a mortgage payment or an insurance payment and perhaps buy some food or medicine. It won't be much, but it will help. To top it all off, they apparently have waited for their Dear Leader to support such payments before they took the bold step to support the actual citizenry and small businesses, rather than Corporate America. This crisis is not likely to be very short, so it's important that this attitude of “citizens first” continue to be foremost in the minds of those who control the nation's life. If the past is any indication, that won't happen without an aroused public.

Wehner, the lifelong Republican, concluded in this way: “The coronavirus is quite likely to be the Trump presidency’s inflection point, when everything changed, when the bluster and ignorance and shallowness of America’s 45th president became undeniable, an empirical reality, as indisputable as the laws of science or a mathematical equation. It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the con man behind the curtain. The president, enraged for having been unmasked, will become more desperate, more embittered, more unhinged. He knows nothing will be the same. His administration may stagger on, but it will be only a hollow shell. The Trump presidency is over.”

The American people should be so lucky.