By nationalizing law enforcement and localizing public health, Donald Trump’s gotten his federal responses “backwards,” according to a former mayor of Chicago and ex-White House chief of staff.

Trump has deployed unidentified paramilitary federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to Portland Ore to do battle with Black Lives Matter protesters in the city leaving complaints of unconstitutional abuses.

Meanwhile, he’s essentially left all response to the novel coronavirus pandemic to leaders at the state and local levels.

That’s left the United States with more than 4.2 million reported cases of COVID-19, including 148,000 deaths.

“I think Donald Trump’s got this backwards. He should be nationalizing our response to public health and localizing our response to public safety,” said Rahm Emmanuel, who served as Chicago’s mayor from 2011 to 2019 and White House chief of staff for the first two years of President Barack Obama’s term. “He’s nationalized our response to public safety and localized our response to public health, which is why we have a virus problem and his response to it has been totally inadequate to the challenge.”

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