Joseph Sabino Mistick: Trump, too, owns what happens on his watch

It was a classic example of Donald Trump at his pugnacious best. During a back-and-forth with Jeb Bush over the Iraq War, Trump bashed Jeb and President George W. Bush by going where no other candidate dared to go in the 2016 Republican presidential primary debates.

“The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign. Remember that,” Trump said. He was booed by the Republican audience, and the pundits wondered if he had blown it with traditional Republicans by attacking the first family of their party.

By November they knew better. That incident had quickly disappeared into a thick fog of other things like it, scorned by party regulars but relished by Republican voters. Trump’s raw instincts were right back then about an old rule of politics: If it happens on your watch, you own it. It could be good or it could be bad. But you own it.

It can seem unfair, but it’s the only measure we have. There is usually a little honeymoon period right after an election — especially for newly elected mayors and governors and presidents — but after that, everything that happens is part of that public official’s record.

This is now a dilemma for Trump supporters who bought his position in 2016. After four years, he has a record that he owns, just as surely as he made George W. Bush own 9/11 and the collapse of the World Trade Center.

By Trump’s standard, he owns this: The United States has 4% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s coronavirus deaths. As of this week, 5.8 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus and more than 180,000 Americans have died from it. Through mid-August, America averaged more than 1,000 deaths per day.

And, using his own test, he cannot wash his hands of this, either: Millions of protesters have flooded our streets seeking justice in the wake of a rash of killings of Black Americans during police encounters. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” he said in his inaugural address, promising to deliver us from the suffering in our cities, but it’s gotten worse.

Trump talks like none of this is his concern. At the White House Fourth of July celebration, he blamed “the radical left — the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters,” trying to wash his hands of these troubles. But he has been in charge for the past four years, and this is happening under his reign.

If the voters hold him to the same standard that he applies to others, how can he gripe? And if he wants credit for a stock market that has remained remarkably strong through all our woes, we get that. But he gets it all, the good and the bad, everything that has happened on his watch. It is all part of his record.

The voters must now decide whether to buy the new standard that Trump set just for himself when he was asked to explain his administration’s weak response in the early days of the pandemic. He said, “I don’t take responsibility at all.”