It's a measure of just how far we've spelunked into the abyss these days that people genuinely applauded a milquetoast message from a president telling them to follow the directions of public health officials amid a possible pandemic. What was once the bare minimum is now a heroic act of statesmanship. Suggesting people listen to the Centers for Disease Control is Churchill's we will fight them on the beaches.

It was a former president, of course, because the current president has demonstrated repeatedly that, due to his pathological self-interest, his main priority is keeping the Dow Jones Industrial Average up as he seeks re-election this year. The novel coronavirus—or more accurately, the disease COVID-19—does not represent the apocalypse, but it is deadlier than the garden-variety flu and very contagious and presents a serious risk to elderly and infirm people who contract it. If people are not going to wash their hands and stay home when they're sick in order to protect themselves, they should do so in order to protect others. But none of this was the message from our fearless national leader Wednesday evening, when he called into Sean Hannity's Fox News program to offer his take on "the corona flu." Yes, he did just try to rebrand it.

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Trump to Hannity on WHO saying coronavirus death rate is 3.4%: "I think the 3.4% number is really a false number. Now this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations ... personally, I'd say the number is way under 1%."



Astoundingly irresponsible. pic.twitter.com/uC9c03zX31 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 5, 2020

Millions of people will believe this over the word of the Fake News Lyin' Rigged Democrat Media, who mostly insist on quoting "experts" and "people who've studied this." Maybe those listening will neglect to take the necessary precautions to protect themselves and others. Trump is already back on Twitter, whining that he didn't tell people to go to work, and that's true. He merely suggested people are going to work while sick, and it's no big deal, which may in turn lead people who listen to him to go to work when they're sick because it's no big deal.

The point is also not whether the death rate may be lower than 3.4 percent, but whether the President of the United States should say things in a public forum about a potentially epidemic disease on a "hunch." We no longer hold our leadership to any sort of evidentiary standards. There is no expectation that the president will demonstrate respect for the scientific method or operate using any of the empirical tools we've developed as a civilization since the Enlightenment. The concept that our leaders have an obligation not to speculate wildly about public health issues is long gone. Just say whatever! Say what you want to be true!

There's reason to believe that as a champion bullshitter, Trump genuinely struggles to discern any difference between the world as it is and the world as he wants it to be. In fact, he's in a constant process of convincing others—and himself—that what he wants to be true is reality. He wants the coronavirus to be no big deal, and to not disrupt the economy in an election year, so he will say that's the case until enough people believe it that it might as well be true.

Until, perhaps, it's not. As we've discussed before, this president has rarely run up against genuine external crises—that is, problems that are not of his own making—while in office. Like Hurricane Maria, this threatens to be an intercession of reality into the fantasy world he's continually constructing around himself, a world where everything is tilted or twisted, a lot or a little, for the benefit of one Donald J. Trump. Let's hope the Centers for Disease Control is allowed to operate outside the event horizon of his bullshit black hole.



Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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