“We have the best mortality rate!”: Trump’s magical COVID-19 delusions dominate new interview

In his latest interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, Donald Trump continued to evade responsibility — and reality — by downplaying the threat that the COVID-19 pandemic poses to American society.

It’s routine that you’ve heard so many times since the first inklings of the encroaching pandemic began emerging from China at the beginning of the year.

“You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero,” Trump claimed on February 26th.

Today, as the virus has infected over 3.7 million people and killed over 140 thousand Americans, the advisability of ignoring anything that the president has to say on the subject of COVID-19 is plainly evident.

Still, Chris Wallace had an obligation to ask Trump about the most important issue affecting the lives of Americans today.

The answers he gave are enough to make you want to chug a handful of soporifics to calm your nerves once you realize how truly clueless the man in the Oval Office remains after 5 months of briefings by the nation’s top epidemiologists.

It is not an auspicious beginning for an interview when the subject starts by arguing with his interlocutor about such basic facts as to where the United States stands in the global rankings of COVID-19 mortality, asking for his aides to provide him with the figures, and then still goes on to lie about what they say.

Despite the avalanche of first-person evidence of the deadly consequences that can result in people who contract the coronavirus, Trump — his sights ever on the effects of any preventative re-closing of the economy on his electoral prospects — continues to compare COVID-19 to the flu or the common cold, a conclusion based on magical thinking rather than science.

It doesn’t appear to dawn on the president that dismissively shrugging off the daily-increasing death toll from his mismanagement of the pandemic isn’t exactly the most appealing campaign strategy that he could embark upon, but, nonetheless, he expressed no empathy for those whose lives have been lost or forever altered by his documented dereliction of duty.

As the old adage goes, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Yes, COVID-19 may eventually disappear. The more salient question is how much death and destruction are you willing to wait through for that distant eventuality?

Donald Trump will be dead eventually, too, but it would be ill-advised to wait until then to rid our government of his participation in its actions since the price for patience far exceeds the potential additional damage he can cause between now and then.

As a publicity-hungry narcissist who wilts when the public adulation ceases, our president won’t stop giving interviews and speeches in the weeks ahead.

Luckily for his opposition, every time he opens his mouth his poll numbers drop further.

Keep on talking, Donald.

You’re saving Joe Biden and the Democrats a ton of campaign advertising dollars by being your own best advertisement for your defeat.

Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.

Original reporting by Aaron Rupar at Vox.

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Vinnie Longobardo

is the Managing Editor of Washington Press and a 35-year veteran of the TV, mobile, & internet industries, specializing in start-ups and the international media business. His passions are politics, music, and art.