Trump Churchill

Please pinch me and wake me up from this nightmare. Is there really a book called Trump and Churchill: Defenders of Western Civilization"?

How could that be? The British prime minister faced down Adolf Hitler, rallied the world against Nazism and fascism and warned against the impending cold war against Russia.

Donald Trump whines about immigrants, Democrats, scientists, facemasks, deep-staters, voting-by-mail, Obamacare and reporters who treat him "so unfairly." He embraces Russia over NATO allies and wants to wall off America from the world.

Simon & Schuster promotes this literary gem about two leaders "fighting different types of tyranny."

It poses the question:

"What do Winston Churchill—the eloquent, eternally quotable wordsmith, pudgy politician of fifty years, wealthy aristocrat, war-time Prime Minister of England—and Donald Trump, the 6’4”, brash, Twitter happy, political neophyte, billionaire entrepreneur—have in common?"

The answer: nothing.

Churchill rescued western civilization from the brink. Trump is driving western civilization back to the brink.

The cheerleader-in-chief has told America that he hopes to have a COVID-19 vaccine in production "by the end of the year or shortly after."

His "Operation Warp Speed" crash program to develop a quickie vaccine is supposed to transform Trump's magical thinking about the vaccine into reality.

The public isn't buying it.

Only 20 percent of Americans think a vaccine will be available by the end of the year, according to a May 27 poll from the Associated Press - NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. More than six-in ten (61 percent) of respondents think 2021 will be the year of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 17 percent say it will take longer than that.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who emerged from his bunker on May 27 to implore Americans to wear facemasks to protect their health and respect the well being of others, says it will take 12 to 18 months for a COVID-19 vaccine.

Merck CEO Ken Frazier threw cold water on Fauci's timetable, calling it "very aggressive" and not something that he would commit his company to.

He believes it could take years for development and clinical testing of a vaccine. “You want to make sure that when you put a vaccine into millions if not billions of people, it is safe,” he told the Financial Times.

Frazier understands that a vaccine will only succeed if the public deems it to be safe and effective.

The AP-NORC poll found that only 49 percent of respondents said they currently would get vaccinated if a vaccine were available. Thirty-one percent aren't sure and 20 percent said they wouldn't get vaccinated.

Public confidence is as important as science when it comes to creating a vaccine to counter coronavirus. PR will play a role in building that confidence.