In that Washington Post article I flagged this morning laying out the administration’s dysfunctional response there was this little nugget:
It may never be known how many thousands of deaths, or millions of infections, might have been prevented with a response that was more coherent, urgent and effective. But even now, there are many indications that the administration’s handling of the crisis had potentially devastating consequences.
Even the president’s base has begun to confront this reality. In mid-March, as Trump was rebranding himself a wartime president and belatedly urging the public to help slow the spread of the virus, Republican leaders were poring over grim polling data that suggested Trump was lulling his followers into a false sense of security in the face of a lethal threat.
“Denial is not likely to be a successful strategy for survival,” GOP pollster Neil Newhouse concluded in a document that was shared with GOP leaders on Capitol Hill and discussed widely at the White House. Trump’s most ardent supporters, it said, were “putting themselves and their loved ones in danger.”
Trump’s message was changing as the report swept through the GOP’s senior ranks. In recent days, Trump has bristled at reminders that he had once claimed the caseload would soon be “down to zero.”
So he changed his “tone” for an afternoon.
Aaaand today:
California Governor Gavin Newsom was asked about starting up the football season at his press conference today. He said no, they have been watching the numbers as Asian countries start to go back to normal and they do not indicate that it will be a good idea to do this four months from now.
One might expect the president to understand by now that putting 50,000 people close together in a petrie dish (aka a football stadium) might not be all that smart when we are just starting to get it under control. But Trump’s gonna Trump and we’ll be fighting him every step of the way to stay alive. That’s really what we’re talking about. He cannot be responsible because he doesn’t know what that is. He can only see the looming election and believe that he has to convince the American people that he was a big hero who led the country to victory.
I guess we’re going to see if his powers of bullshit are strong enough to overcome the pile of dead bodies that will have piled up by then.
Update: Here you go: