Of all the many things he did, I argue that this is the stupidest, most pointless and damaging thing he did. There was no upside to doing it. He went out of his way to destroy a program that had been running successfully out of sheer stupidity. He mainly hurt his voters (cattle farmers in rural areas), not democrats. It hurt him on the biggest issue he ran on - inflation.
It was a massive unforced error that he’s been scrambling for months to fix.
He could literally have done nothing and it would have been better.
Almost all of his other missteps and mistakes can be rationalised - there was some benefit to himself or someone who bribed him or voted for him. But this screwworm thing just perfectly encapsulates him as a person and his presidency as a whole - something works well for 70 years to protect Americans and he destroys it through malicious incompetence.
> He could literally have done nothing and it would have been better.
Struggling to find a policy where that doesn't apply.
If he'd gotten elected and then gone and lived on the golf course for four years it's hard to argue things would be worse on the other side of the pond.
Remember he ended the brutal unsolvable war between Azerbaijan and Albania - when you are operating on that level you get a pass for these minor oversights.
I think Iran was an enormous blunder that hurt everyone around the world, and will for a long time. But at least I can see what he was aiming for - the acclaim for winning a war and bringing a long time foe to heel. He was sold an easy war by Netanyanhu and being gullible he was easily convinced.
There was a reasonable, desirable goal he was aiming for.
But this screwworm thing is so stupid simply because there was no upside to it. It just hurt Americans, especially Trump voters. No one benefited other than screwworms now feasting on American cattle.
> That's almost like disbanding the CDC's pandemic response team mere months before a once in a lifetime global pandemic.
Both parties of capital interests have lots of blood on their hands for the intentional mishandling of the pandemic (which has not ended) in the name of propping up our archaic consumption-first economies.
Only one of them fired the pandemic response team right before a global pandemic.
The pandemic did end, because it turned into an endemic, meaning it is now an endemic and not a pandemic, meaning the pandemic part of it went away. Endemic is another word for "like a pandemic, but never ends".