COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW – 04/05/2020
Jon Allsop
ON SATURDAY, FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH made a rare public intervention. In a slickly produced video message, Bush called for compassion and solidarity in the face of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. “In the final analysis,” he said, over a montage of heart-warming images, “we are not partisan combatants. We are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God. We rise or fall together. And we are determined to rise.” Some partisan combatants did not take kindly to Bush’s words; one, the current president, Donald Trump, attacked Bush on Twitter for failing to speak up in similar terms when he (Trump) was impeached recently. Before the weekend was out, however, Trump, too, would condemn partisanship. Last night—during a town hall on Fox News in which he sat (*metaphor klaxon*) in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial—he expressed shock that “during a crisis, it would be so partisan” (the “it” here being Democrats and the media). “They always said, Lincoln, nobody got treated worse than Lincoln,” Trump said. “I believe I am treated worse.”