Here's the coronavirus expert who made Trump believe it was not a "Democrat hoax."

Everything you need to know about Trump and today’s Republican Party in a nutshell (from Robert Costa in today’s Washington Post):

A turning point for Trump came last week when Fox News host Tucker Carlson, whom the president regularly calls, said in his opening monologue: “This is real.” “People you trust — people you probably voted for — have spent weeks minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem,” Carlson said. Carlson’s riff caught Trump’s attention and was one of the factors that led the president to start to reconsider his position, according to two White House officials who requested anonymity to speak frankly.

Research had piled up. Dr. Anthony Fauci was warning Trump and the nation, aloud, over and over. Medical experts, scientists, epidemiologists and statisticians were shouting from the rooftops that the threat was real and it was deadly. And Trump listened to none of it. Believed none of it.

He delivered a fact-free address from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, a masterpiece of stupidity and inanity penned by his two most trusted advisors, Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner.

Time was of the essence. Trump blamed “media hysteria.” He blamed Democrats. Some of his most stalwart backers blamed George Soros. Sean Hannity, repeating Trump’s lie, told his audience night after night that the virus was no worse than the seasonal flu, stupidity echoed by Fox & Friends, Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro among others.

Meanwhile, the clock was ticking. The virus was rampaging. Infection was spreading. Massive death was on the horizon. But only when Tucker Carlson, the racist, virulent and vile Fox News host, proclaimed that the threat from novel coronavirus was real, did Trump begin to understand the threat posed to him. To the economy. To his administration.

To his re-election.

Everything wrong with today’s Republican Party wrapped up in a big bow. Anti-science, anti-fact, anti-truth. Ignorant, selfish, greedy, full of hate.

And we are all paying the price.