I have, until now, strongly resisted the temptation to comment on the political aspects of the coronavirus pandemic and the role played in this spreading crisis by our commander-in-chief, President Trump.

Some would say this is not the time to “play politics.” I disagree. It is a time, I believe, in addition to addressing the threat to each and every one of us of COVID-19, to bring to the attention of our country the magnitude of the failed leadership of a man who likens himself to a “wartime president” in the mold of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, but who, we now have seen, has behaved in a completely opposite fashion, whose blame-shifting rhetoric has yet to rise to the scale and scope of the challenge. He instead has minimized from the very beginning the severity of the crisis we now face, and continually trades a false concern for the welfare of the nation in exchange for his primary concern, namely his political image, the behavior of the stock market and his prospects for reelection. He has failed abysmally to take actions that would protect each and every one of us — in particular the nation’s health care workers — from this virus.

“Treated like trash” is the title of a recent New York Post piece (Feb. 25), with a stunning front-page photo of three desperate Manhattan hospital nurses clad in large black trash bags fashioned into makeshift protective garb due to a shortage of regulation safety gear. Is this what the richest country in the world has now come to?

Our “detractor-in-chief” authorized a Defense Production Act that would require businesses to sign contracts or fulfill orders deemed necessary for national defense such as respirators and protective gear but, to the dismay of health experts and governors alike, only recently put it into effect, once again wasting precious time, with the lame explanation that manufacturing companies would rise to the occasion on their own — despite taking weeks to “ramp up” once they did — rather than participating in a cooperatively coordinated and expedited federal effort.

Our “wartime president” squandered the warnings from his own intelligence community back in January of the dire threat posed to this nation by the emerging coronavirus pandemic in China — effectively putting us at least two months behind the curve — instead advising us that COVID-19 not only would mysteriously disappear in a matter of weeks, that we need not worry about it and should get on with our lives, but best of all that it was just another “hoax” concocted by the Democratic Party and left-wing media in an effort to derail his presidential campaign. He lied to us then, and he continues to lie to us now, much as he has done throughout the entirety of his three years in office, with 16,241 false or misleading claims to his credit and counting, according to the Washington Post’s Fact Checker (Jan. 20).

So here we are, faced with perhaps one of the gravest threats to the welfare of this country since World War II, and who do we have in charge? The seeming equivalent, I daresay, of an ageing con-man and narcissist with the cognitive and emotional skills of a 6-year old, with due respect for this comparison to the average 6-year old.

In addition to my concern with this president’s imperious conduct, I have finally reached the point where I am downright angered by the near criminal behavior of his assorted sycophants and cronies — 21st Congressional District Rep. Elise Stefanik included — who have not just abandoned their sworn constitutional responsibilities by so often “looking the other way” in the face of this president’s outrageous conduct but who have all but coronated him, as has his “cult following” — amplifying his lies — as the greatest thing that has happened to this country since the invention of sliced bread, or to put it in more stark terms used by some of his Christian evangelical supporters, as “a messenger from God.”

I wrote, in a Guest Commentary in this paper back in September of 2018, that Donald Trump was a “demagogue in the making, a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims to gain power; that he was waging a war on truth, and that truth is the lifeblood of a democracy.” I added that, for the first time in my life, I was genuinely fearful for the future of our country, and for the democratic institutions that Donald Trump clearly appears to be intent on dismantling, consistent with the proclamation of his Breitbart cohort and political strategist Steve Bannon, who bluntly advocates for “the deconstruction of the administrative state.” That fear remains to this day. We have inadvertently handed over the reins of government and the incredible power that goes with it to a man who lies to us constantly, who hasn’t told us the truth about the coronavirus crisis that now confronts us, and continues to not tell us the truth. It is time for this nation to wake up and take seriously the actions of this president and his administration, to hold it responsible for its incompetence and misdeeds at our expense, to no longer excuse or dismiss them as just another episode in Donald Trump’s version of a long-running TV reality show, but to recognize them for what they are, one of the gravest threats to our national security and way of life that this country has ever experienced.

In closing, let no one be surprised should this president use the coronavirus pandemic, should it not be sufficiently brought under control in the months ahead, as an excuse to declare a national emergency in a possible attempt to postpone, if not outright cancel, our upcoming 2020 national election, with the likely consent of Republican stalwarts like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, thereby assuring his continuity in office for the foreseeable future, much as some would-be dictator in a banana republic.

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Joe Mercurio lives in Saranac Lake.