There are numerous problems with Trump's brag here. Trump is giving credit for his decision to send ventilators to up-for-reelection Republican Sen. Cory Gardner—but Trump had previously ignored the requests of the state's Democratic governor, instead now clearly suggesting that his decision was based on the politics of the person asking. Trump has done this before, last year crediting Sen. Thom Tillis for his decision to declare a national disaster in North Carolina after Hurricane Dorian rather than any of the other state officials begging for the same. Tillis was in a tough reelection battle, as Gardner is now; Trump's use of national disasters to reward patrons and damage enemies, regardless of what lives he endangers, is apace with his half-authoritarian, half-stupidity-based willingness to use all the rest of government as similar slush fund.

But bragging about relinquishing a mere hundred ventilators to Colorado after his government seized five times that number out from under Colorado—that is, if possible, lower.

Last week, CNN reported that Colorado had ordered 500 of the devices, but the manufacturer canceled their order—along with "many" other orders—when Federal Emergency Management Agency officials moved in to buy the same equipment themselves. "States aren't just competing for ventilators with other states, but also with FEMA," said CNN's quoted "congressional source."

On Friday, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis confirmed the canceled order. "Either work with us, or don’t do anything at all," he told CNN host Don Lemon. "But this middle ground where they’re buying stuff out from under us, and not telling us what we’re going to get, that’s really challenging to manage our hospital surge and the safety of our health care workers in that kind of environment.”

We still do not know just what, to put it bluntly, the hell the Trump administration is doing in its bizarre procurement efforts. The administration did not make any major attempts to procure emergency medical supplies until just weeks ago, despite the critical urgency and known shortages. After national outrage swelled to levels that could no longer be ignored, Trump's team (led, in some as-of-yet-inexplicable manner, by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner) sought to "solve" the problem by reaching down into supply chains to seize materials being procured by states and hospitals themselves—doing nothing to solve the problem of short supply, but helping to further raise prices and spark bidding wars.

For Trump to brag, in the middle of that half-fiasco, half-malevolent clusterf--k, that he is graciously providing a fraction of the supplies his government prevented a state from getting in the first place, is ... typical. For Trump, it is typical. We also cannot simply take him at his word that those 100 ventilators will arrive in Colorado; he has lied repeatedly over near-identical things, and will continue to do so.

The 10,000 American deaths and rising have had no impact on him. The depression-level scale of unemployment, as botched testing and slow response led to a need for nationwide stay-at-home orders, have had no impact on him. His metrics remain the same: Which things make him look good, on his television set? Which make him look bad?

He envisions himself as hero-emperor of a crisis of his own making. He will reward his allies, and punish his enemies. Whether 400 missing ventilators will result in deaths does not enter his mind. The supposed United States president hasn't shown any concern over whether Americans lived or died from the first days of the crisis onward. He pretended it was not happening until he could no longer pretend. He insisted it would be small and trivial until it was large and catastrophic. He says now it will be short, when it is absolutely assured to be long.

And he tweets, and holds the most bizarre press conferences the White House has ever seen in any era, demanding praise and making threats towards reporters, lawmakers, and elected officials who decline to provide it.