President Trump claimed last week that the coronavirus crisis had turned him into a “wartime president.” Over the weekend, he signaled that he might aid the enemy. “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” he shouted on Twitter on Sunday night. “AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!”

The “problem” to which Trump refers is a pandemic that threatens to kill between 200,000 and 1.7 million Americans over the next year, according to CDC estimates. The “cure” is a massive temporary reduction in American social and economic life that will throw the nation into a recession and upend countless lives and fortunes. Trump’s Sunday tweet—which reportedly reflects a deeper unease within the White House about public health experts’ approach to the pandemic—is the first sign that he may be doubting the guidance he gave Americans just a week ago to flatten the curve.

For months, Trump downplayed the dangers of the coronavirus outbreak in public and private. He told supporters that it was a “hoax” that Democrats and news organizations had exaggerated to undermine him. Not until last Monday, when the number of confirmed cases in the United States hit 4,000 and the stock market suffered record-breaking losses, did he decide to reckon seriously with this pandemic. That the mercurial president is already threatening to reverse course, as the number of domestic cases tops 40,000, speaks to a more fundamental problem for Americans in this crisis: Trump doesn’t care.

I don’t mean to suggest that the president wants scores of Americans to die from the coronavirus. But it’s clear he doesn’t care about the people whom social-distancing practices and lockdown measures are trying to save. These people are hypothetical, abstract, and intangible. (He has also disputed damning death tolls before.) The president is more concerned about the cornerstones of his reelection message: a low unemployment rate that is likely to skyrocket this week and a plummeting stock market, which hurts his family business and corporate pals.



Trump’s lack of empathy is worsened by his preference for style over substance. His daily press briefings promise miracle cures that don’t work, sweeping action that falls far short, and imminent relief that never appears. When news organizations catch on to the snake-oil salesmanship, he attacks. “I watch and listen to the Fake News, CNN, MSDNC, ABC, NBC, CBS, some of FOX (desperately & foolishly pleading to be politically correct), the @nytimes, & the @washingtonpost, and all I see is hatred of me at any cost,” he wrote on Twitter on Sunday evening. “Don’t they understand that they are destroying themselves?”