Author Michael Lewis over the weekend said President Donald Trump has been a “really crappy coach” during the coronavirus crisis and argued that the Trump administration never “assumed the responsibility of managing” the federal government’s “portfolio of risks” because the transition period was so “chaotic.”
Speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, The Blind Side and Moneyball author said former President Barack Obama felt an “obligation” to have a smooth transition because former President George W. Bush “had handed the government over to him so cleanly.”
“And there were all these briefings to be got, including what you do if there is an epidemic of any sort, and the briefings are really non-ideological, sort of like how we handle this and you may handle it differently, but it’s a transfer of knowledge” Lewis said, adding that his book, The Fifth Risk, is about seeking out the briefings the Trump administration “never bothered to get.”
Lewis said the briefings basically amounted to “a description of a portfolio of risks that the federal government was managing, and [Trump] was going to be in charge of.”
“And you saw that they were going to be totally unprepared for whatever happened, because they never really assumed the responsibility of managing it,” Lewis said. “The pandemic, there were briefing specific to this particular problem. And I think if those briefings had happened, I think the history of this whole thing we’re going through now starts at that moment.”
Lewis then said he feels that America has a “coaching problem” with a “really crappy coach” and a “very talented team” of scientists who are “just disorganized.”
“We’re the world’s leaders in the sort of expertise one would use to defend oneself from a virus… And you know, you’re seeing other countries outperform us in all kinds of ways. Because essentially, the head coach… has not assumed responsibility for his job,” Lewis said. “And, you know, you don’t really think of the presidency as a coaching job, but it is a coaching job… You’re trying to bring the best out of the country. You’re trying to unify the country, get it to act as a team. You know, there are real similarities and there’s a real abdication of that responsibility right now.”
Lewis also said the problem is exacerbated because the Trump administration “put people in who are wholly inappropriate and who aren’t really equipped” to deal with a pandemic because those who got various government positions “through basically a loyalty test” do not “know anything about the jobs.”
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