The question that sprang to mind as I watched him epically fuck up the most important moment of his presidency was this: What’s going to happen when the numbers of coronavirus deaths begin to climb, and his numbers begin to tank? They will. He’s not going to be able to stop the pandemic from killing thousands of Americans, and this lawless maniac is capable of anything. With the NBA and Major League Baseball suspending their seasons, with “March Madness” canceled, with concerts and festivals and parades canceled, Broadway theaters closed, schools shuttered from coast to coast, and the fact that we have no idea how long the coronavirus epidemic will last, Donald Trump is fully capable of making plans to cancel the election in November to save himself.
Trump tried to keep the whole thing secret at first, ordering the Department of Health and Human Services to hold its meetings about the coronavirus in secret — in a goddamned SCIF, for crying out loud! Because those initial meetings were top secret, important experts on epidemiology who lacked security clearances were banned from attending. Testing for the virus was held up by the CDC, which repeatedly refused to release hospitals and independent research facilities from regulations that prevented them from developing and fielding their own test kits. The idea throughout the initial weeks of the virus was to follow Trump’s lead, keep the numbers of coronavirus cases as low as possible, and hope for the best. Continue reading.