Trump’s career is built on finding shortcuts. Against the virus, there are none.

For many painful weeks, President Trump treated the coronavirus as he had so many adversaries through more than half a century in the public spotlight: He denied reality, he danced around the facts, he attacked with bluster, and above all, he tried to work his marketing magic: Everything will be okay, the virus will go away, America can get back to business, I am doing a great job. It was standard-issue Trump, a message delivered with his lifelong confidence that he would get the result he wanted by spurning the experts, breaking the rules and declaring his own success.

Trump is Trump because he is perceived by many as someone who gets things done, or at least gets what he wants, by ignoring the boundaries that hem in most everyone else — Congress’s procedures, the bureaucracy’s hierarchies, the law’s intricacies, the media’s scruples, the public’s sensitivities. He is always in search of the shortcut.

From his earliest days as a real estate developer through his first three years as president, Trump stuck with a formula: a constant patter of provocation, pride and preening, all in service of finding the quickest path to a claim of victory. “Anytime any obstacle came up, he told us to ignore it, whether it was a building department citation or politicians denying permission for something,” said Barbara Res, who spent 18 years as Trump’s top construction executive. “ ‘Just do what we need to do,’ he’d say. . . . Back then, the worst thing that could happen was a fine. Now, it’s people’s lives.” Continue reading.