From the Washington Post:

“Trump has fostered a transactional dynamic — in which he insinuates that loyalty and praise could be helpful for states seeking federal help — that has unsettled governors looking for fair terms and clear guidance from the federal government, several gubernatorial aides said privately.”

No surprise from our Narcissist-in-Chief. And that while we are hunkering down, sheltering in place, hoping that we’ll survive the Corona virus in spite of Trump.

Further, according to the article, Trump may regard the entire US as a COVID-19 sacrifice zone, necessary to save the economy:

“There’s a fatalism that no matter what he does, he’s going to get blamed by half of the country,” said a former senior administration official with knowledge of Trump’s thinking. “If there is something he has some measure of control over, which is the economy, why not potentially try to take action? Yes, there will be a death toll, and he’ll get blamed one way or another, but in all likelihood, whether he gets reelected or not will depend on where the economy is and where people’s perceptions of the economy are six months from now. That’s where he is primarily focused.”

I highlighted the death toll reference in the excerpt above because it shows that it doesn’t really matter whether Trump simply doesn’t understand what exponential means, or whether he does understand it but doesn’t care. The result will be the same either way for those of us who are sheltering in place and for those who aren’t. Here are the range of possibilities, according to the New York Times,

Between 160 million and 214 million people in the United States could be infected over the course of the epidemic, according to a projection that encompasses the range of the four scenarios. That could last months or even over a year, with infections concentrated in shorter periods, staggered across time in different communities, experts said. As many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die.

With Trump at the helm, I’d guess that the US trajectory will probably tend toward the higher end of that range.

Read the full Washington Post article here:

“Inside Trump’s risky push to reopen the country amid the coronavirus crisis“