Trump thinks he can bluff his way to victory

A few weeks ago, in one of his many branding brainstorms during this COVID-19 crisis, President Trump started calling himself a “wartime” president who was valiantly leading the country in the battle against “the invisible enemy.” This was rolled out like a campaign slogan, indicating that it was part of a planned strategy to put Trump at the center of the response to the pandemic.

In remarks obviously prepared by someone else, he evoked World War II and said:

Every generation of Americans has been called to make shared sacrifices for the good of the nation. … Now it’s our time. We must sacrifice together, because we are all in this together, and we will come through together. It’s the invisible enemy. That’s always the toughest enemy, the invisible enemy.

Not bad. This was in mid-March, during the period when he was appearing at the task force briefings and pretending to be in charge, before he realized that everything had gone awry and that he was being blamed for the failures. In fact, it was just a day later that he started passing the buck to the governors for failing to save their states, explaining that the federal government is simply “back-up” and not a “shipping clerk.”