"If the president and the White House tries to move forward now with, you know, these really draconian solutions, I think you're going to have people second-guessing him," the conservative said.
March 17, 2020

Joe Scarborough wondered it the U.S. would be locked down "like France and Spain."

Tom Nichols warned that we shouldn't count on Trump having a normal press conference as proof he would do the right thing.

"One press conference where the president meets kind of the minimum requirements of sobriety and clarity is not a sea change," he said.

"It is something to be happy about. It is something to applaud, but I think, you know, the president has trouble focusing. I think that's true for this administration in general. I think most Americans probably would be happy if Tony Fauci became president right about now. I don't think it's going to be a good move to try to go for a national lockdown," he warned.

"Looking at this as a matter of policy, I think the problem is that this president has lost the benefit of the doubt with a lot of people. so things like very draconian measures that look like curtailments of freedom, especially during an election season, are going to get a jaundiced eye from a lot of Americans. That's unfortunate. I don't say that because I somehow think the president would be up to no good doing that, or the team around him, or the doctors advising him.

"Rather, because of the president's track record, not just for three years, but especially in the past three months, where he has been really inconstant and lacked transparency and put out a lot of bad information. If the president and the White House tries to move forward now with, you know, these really draconian solutions, I think you're going to have people second-guessing him because, again, he's lost the benefit of the doubt among a lot of Americans.

"I think what they're doing is they're trying to edge us toward more tougher solutions incrementally, so that we can accept it more easily."

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