From Mother Jones
Like a virus, the president knows how to adapt.
A virus can adapt quickly, and so can Donald Trump.
Through the course of the coronavirus crisis, Trump has demonstrated the adaptability that has so often helped his career in business and politics, as he shifted from predator developer to scammy brand-marketer to reality-TV celebrity. And one element of that flexibility is Trump's unparalleled capacity to say whatever he needs at a given moment to gain an advantage or serve a personal interest.
This skill, if it can be called that, was on display at a recent Trump campaign rally, which these days are held daily in the White House, where Trump and members of his coronavirus task force brief reporters and the rest of the world. (Trump has been bragging about the ratings for these briefings, cheering his audience numbers, as Americans perish.) When Trump at this particular session on Sunday wasn't bashing the media, belittling his perceived foes, or praising himself, he made a startling remark: "So you're talking about 2.2 million deaths, 2.2 million people from this. And so if we could hold that down, as we're saying, to 100,000. It's a horrible number, maybe even less but to 100,000. So we have between 100 and 200,000, and we altogether have done a very good job."
At this briefing, Trump
It appeared Trump had finally realized that the amount of coronavirus death in this country on his watch is going to be astronomical. His weeks of denial, inaction, and dangerous happy-talk -- downplaying the threat, claiming the virus would disappear in better weather, saying it was no worse than the flu, hinting social restraints could soon be lifted -- had done nothing to stop the lethal threat spreading across the country. (A virus can't be stopped by BS.) Trump, who originally worried that bad coronavirus numbers would spook the markets and undercut his the-economy-is-great! reelection argument, needed to pivot. To adapt.
Trump is now attempting to set the stage for a grand finale in which he can claim victory and demand reelection while standing on the corpses of 200,000 or so dead Americans. This will be an absurd argument but the nation has already seen a flood of absurdity from Trump and an overflow of credulity from his cultlike followers. Still, meeting his own 200,000-dead mark of success could (unfortunately for the nation) be an arduous task for Trump. On Monday, Dr. Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for Trump's coronavirus task force, appeared on NBC's Today show and said, "If we do things together well, almost perfectly, we could get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities." And she added, "We're not sure all of America is responding in a uniform way" -- meaning we are not doing things almost perfectly.
If Birx is correct, Trump might have outsmarted himself by establishing 200,000 as his ghoulish I-win benchmark, for her grim prediction reaches higher in the real world where the response is not almost perfect. (Where are the tests? Where are the ventilators? Where is the PPE? Where are the lockdown orders in areas about to be hit by coronavirus?). But Trump, the onetime owner of bankrupt casinos, appears to be betting on this 200,000 estimate. That horrific level of death will still be a tremendous tragedy for which Trump will bear partial responsibility. And the number of fatalities is likely to be higher. Should that be the case, Trump will, no doubt, adapt once more and concoct a new strain. A virus has no conscience. It only exists to survive and spread.
