Trump is going full Xi on COVID

In his ongoing effort to reopen the economy at all hazards, President Trump is taking a page from President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party and doing the very thing he rightly faults them for having done when the outbreak first began: concealing information about its severity.

The president is firing officials who refuse to minimize the threat, praising irresponsible behaviors by governors and business owners alike, encouraging people to break the law, and in general serving as an effective ally of the SARS CoV-2 virus and COVID-19.

He's downplaying testing, fearing that we might "make ourselves look bad" even as his own task force speaks of the need for drastically increasing it. And what's the use of having a taskforce and those guidelines if POTUS is going to praise people for ignoring them? It seems that ever since he finally woke up and acknowledged that COVID is indeed a big deal several weeks ago, he's sending a double message. It's as if part of him- perhaps the larger part- is still in denial about it.

I'm beginning to wonder whether he thinks that viruses can vote. And- why? He won't be able to conceal a resurgence in the disease. Re-opening and then re-closing the economy won't help it to recover and it certainly won't help his re-election prospects. It's far too late for Mr. Trump to hope to be vindicated in his refusal to acknowledge the seriousness of the threat or to escape his responsibility for failing to prepare for it. Perhaps he thinks that there's political capital to be gained in cashing in on the delirium of the craziest libertarians, who think that their rights are being violated by common-sense public health measures or the even nuttier folks who think that the whole pandemic is a hoax.

What is the payoff for Donald Trump? What does he think he stands to gain by encouraging irresponsible behavior that can only make this entire tragedy worse?

Nobody ever knows for sure what goes on between this president's ears. But in some ways, an even bigger puzzle is why a small number of usually responsible, rational people defend our president's apparent determination to make a historic crisis worse rather than better.

Or can it be that even Donald Trump's judgment is really so catastrophically bad that he thinks that effectively allying himself with the virus is going to help us? You can't appease a virus, Mr. President. And that being the case, what the hell do you think you're doing?