Sidebar: Ranting and Raving (v4): It's not the Impeachment, Stupid

I wanted to share some additional information related to my earlier post on how it's not impeachment that's messing up the president's response to the coronavirus crisis.  

That post was prompted by a Henry Olsen column from about a week ago in the Washington Post. One of Olsen's points was that the impeachment process was slogging along back in January and February, and that was the same time China was in the thick of battle with the virus, and (emphasis added)

Despite the near certainty that Republicans would not vote to convict the president, Democrats and most of the major media were almost entirely focused on impeachment. As a result, the White House was focused on addressing this threat to its survival, not on preparing for a threat from China that might never even materialize.

I wanted to see if what Olsen suggested - that the White House was basically consumed with trying to survive, and so couldn't also focus on the potential COVID-19 threat, so I did a little digging. Here's what I found.

I reviewed the activity just on the president's primary Twitter account (there's also the White House account, the @POTUS account, his campaign account, and others who reliably talk about whatever he wants them to) and found that he tweeted or retweeted 1,834 times in January and February - around 30 times a day. I searched that activity for a few keywords, to see what was on his mind.

In case you were wondering, he mentioned coronavirus/virus 28 times, and COVID-19 once.  When it comes to topics likely related to impeachment, he was much more active: 

• 197 mentions of impeach/impeachment
• 197 mentions of Democrats
•  99 mentions for Adam Schiff
•  65 mentions of some kind of hoax
•  65 mentions of Nancy/Nancy Pelosi
•  60 mentions of Dems
•  49 mentions of fake (most of them fake news)
•  29 mentions of Biden (Joe or Hunter)
•  26 mentions of Russia
•  24 mentions of Ukraine
•  15 mentions of FISA
•  14 mentions of whistleblower
•  12 mentions of Romney

But, it's not like he was slacking on other subjects, including calling Democratic presidential candidates names, endorsing Republicans, and other presidential things:

• 57 mentions of Bernie/Bernie Sanders
• 40 mentions of debate/debates
• 37 mentions of poll/polls/polling
• 35 mentions of Michael Bloomberg (including Mini Mike)
• 25 mentions of China
• 25 mentions of endorsement (my complete and total endorsement, e.g.)
• 11 mentions of Stone/Roger Stone
• 10 mentions of Pocahontas/Warren

As expected, whether he was talking about impeachment things or non-impeachment things, he was definitely focused on himself. But here's the thing: when you have over 57,000,000 legitimate Twitter followers (and another 15,000,000 fake ones) you can push any message you want, and before you know it, what you are talking about becomes what the media is talking about. 

Would you be surprised that, as the White House was fighting for its very survival, the president managed to attend 10 rallies - or, on average, one every six days? 

During this very trying time for White House, the president managed to make nine trips to the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, which averages just under one trip every seven days.  

He also attended four fundraisers, two each month, or one every 15 days, on average. These were important to the president's own survival instincts, and raised tens of millions of dollars. One of them would have cost me and My Sweet Baboo a pretty $580,600 to attend, if we wanted the full treatment. One of the fundraisers was all the way across the country in California, not at all near his beloved Palm Beach. 

And finally, I looked at media coverage, just from Olsen's own paper, the WaPo. Would it surprise you that, in January alone, there were over 200 articles or posts that included the word 'coronavirus', and in February, there were over 600?  Or that the articles and videos were across all categories of the news spectrum? Politics, health, technology, finance, the economy, opinion, travel/leisure, lifestyle, entertainment and more?

That's an average of just over 13 mentions a day, compared to the president's average of around 2 per day.

Olsen can say that the focus was on impeachment, but I'd say that, as always, Trump was focused on his favorite subject: the one he sees in the mirror. The one who likes to golf, who likes to visit his own properties (and charge us dearly for the privilege), who likes to raise money for his own political survival, and who loves to be the center of attention.

And, of course, who loves to make everything bad good again, or at the very least, point the blame fingers in someone else's directions.

Again, it's not impeachment that drags him down. It's him.