Epilogue
Crisis over! On May 5, the president, touring maskless at a mask factory while “Live and Let Die” blared, announced plans to disband the coronavirus task force (and then dis-disbanded it, at least for now). Two days earlier, at the Lincoln Memorial, comparisons were drawn between Trump and Honest Abe, by Trump anyway: “Look, I am greeted with a hostile press the likes of which no president has ever seen. The closest would be that gentleman right up there. They always said Lincoln—nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.”
In other words, back to normal.
According to the somewhat different pandemic time line on Trump’s 2020 campaign Web site, the president is “taking concrete actions,” “taking decisive action,” and “taking critical steps.” In short: a man on the take!
At her first press conference, the new White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, announced in seeming earnest, “I will never lie to you.” On Fox & Friends, Jared Kushner said he hoped that by July “the country’s really rocking again.” (Who talks like that? Jared Kushner, apparently.) And in a time-saving decision, the White House made it clear that the country could start reopening without any bothersome C.D.C. guidelines.
All of this is reassuring, as is the fact that daily coronavirus-related deaths were expected to no more than double in the United States during the coming months. And besides, as the administration has reportedly come to feel—contrary to expert opinion, naturally—those numbers are exaggerated anyway. Epidemiology, schmepidemiology.
Donald Trump has put the coronavirus catastrophe behind him, and returned the nation’s focus back where it belongs: on him, and on his re-election. Pandemics are for losers.
