CLEVELAND -- The president who tried to strip 15 million Americans of their health care now masquerades as the man who can keep us healthy.

Every night, we watch in horror as he lumbers to a White House podium that’s become his empathy-free comfort zone.

But instead of help and national leadership in the coronavirus crisis, President Donald Trump sows divisions, belittles governors who oppose him and offers prescriptions laced with lies, false hope, phony cures and promises of a rapid recovery.

Franklin Roosevelt soothed a nation with fireside chats. Donald Trump sells us snake oil, frightening jittery Americans with exaggerations, empty promises and misstatements.

Imagine the horror of a president, on live television, ordering his slavishly devoted vice president to punish those governors who don’t feed his unquenchable ego with niceties. That is one entirely reasonable interpretation of what President Trump told Mike Pence during the White House coronavirus briefing on March 27: Do as little as possible to help the people in Michigan and Washington because their governors aren’t “appreciative.” If that runs up the death toll, so be it.

Trump spent six weeks minimizing the coronavirus risk. As it spread, he did an about-face, trying to sell his gullible supporters by lying that he always knew it would become a pandemic.

He also falsely promised “anyone who wants a test can get a test.” It was the most unforgivable lie imaginable to a fearful public when he said it. And it’s just as big a lie today.

Trump’s collaborators have rallied to protect him, almost certainly increasing the number of infections among the blindly loyal, red-state faithful. The bottom-feeders on Fox News and gold-plated phonies like Rush Limbaugh have done more lasting harm to this nation than any 51 senators could even hope to inflict.

So here we are, at this perilous point in history, at or near the apex of the most dangerous pandemic in 102 years. And it is our deadly misfortune to be led by a man in denial, whose breathtaking ineptitude has created more health risks than it solved.

But for yet another act of heroism by the late Sen. John McCain, this would’ve been worse. On July 27, 2017, McCain cast the key vote defeating the Trump-backed plan to repeal large swaths of the Affordable Care Act.

As usual, Sen. Rob Portman voted with Trump. As usual, Sen. Sherrod Brown did not.

Never before has a president failed the test of leadership in such colossal fashion as President Trump has in the past three months. Never before has a president assembled such a witless team of advisers. Never before has a president shunned the science-based facts offered by a 79-year-old man who graduated first in his class from Cornell Medical School in favor of the slimy former mayor of New York and a 39-year-old son-in-law with a breathtaking resume of failure.

Every day, the nation’s handful of great news organizations fill the front pages and airways with some of the best journalism ever produced, documented tales of the Trump administration’s mind-numbing incompetence in dealing with the coronavirus, incompetence that has had a direct impact on its death rates.

Just Tuesday, The New York Times reported on leaked memos showing that, in late January and again in late February, while Trump was repeatedly downplaying the threat, trade adviser Peter Navarro circulated memos warning the coming pandemic could cost hundreds of thousands of American lives. The second memo, dated Feb. 23, was addressed directly to Trump, via his White House staff, according to Politico.

As British science writer Ed Yong wrote March 25 in The Atlantic, the “White House is a ghost town of scientific expertise …. Rudderless, blindsided, lethargic and uncoordinated, America has mishandled the COVID-19 crisis to a substantially worse degree than what every health expert I’ve spoken with had feared.”

The public finally seems to be figuring that out, but not the soulless Republican congressmen and senators who have spent more than three years turning a blind eye towards Trump’s willful malfeasance, misfeasance and nonfeasance that is now claiming the lives of their constituents.

Republican House members and senators are now scurrying around their states and districts, taking credit for helping small businesses obtain stimulus funding. But that won’t bring back any of those people who died because of this country’s pitiful response to the virus.

Consider Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has suggested Trump’s preoccupation with his Senate impeachment trial may have contributed to the administration’s tortoise-like response to the virus’s spread.

Trump’s Senate trial ended Feb. 5. So preoccupied was the president that he found time to hold five January campaign rallies, host a Super Bowl party at his Mar-a-Lago resort and play golf at one of his properties on at least four occasions.

The GOP’s final act of betrayal against the country is just now beginning to unfold. It will be a concerted effort to save Trump’s job by doing whatever it takes to prevent people from voting Nov. 3.

In a fair fight, Trump can’t win re-election. That’s why this malignant man and his Republican agents in battleground states will do whatever it takes to steal it.

Brent Larkin was The Plain Dealer’s editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009.

To reach Brent Larkin: blarkin@cleveland.com

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