In February, Trump predicted the virus would go away by April. “It’s like a miracle. It will disappear.” That reckless prediction also came weeks after White House staff warned the virus could imperil millions of Americans’ lives while costing the U.S. economy trillions of dollars.

In March, the president told worried Republican senators to “just stay calm” because “it will go away.” Trump spent much of that month ignoring Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, by declaring that the untested use of a malaria drug to treat covid-19 could be “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.” This week, the Food and Drug Administration had to warn Americans against the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus because it caused “serious heart rhythm problems.”

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Throughout April, Trump’s magical thinking continued full force, with the flustered president assuring reporters this week that covid-19 “might not come back at all” this fall. Fauci again had to correct the president’s spurious claims. The next day, Trump publicly peppered his staff and medical team about imagined benefits of ingesting disinfectants and implanting lights for pandemic patients. Once again, Trump’s own administration had to warn the public against believing the president’s ramblings.

As the former reality TV host trotted out these baseless remedies and delusional denials at his afternoon news conferences, 53,000 Americans died from a disease that did not go away miraculously in April. Instead, as former vice president Joe Biden predicted in January, Trump left America ill-prepared for the coming pandemic. Trump and Fox News’s Sean Hannity were still claiming in March that the press was overblowing a crisis that Hannity declared was being used to “bludgeon Trump again with this new hoax.” A month after the cable news host pushed out that obscene and dangerous disinformation, covid-19 killed more Americans on a single day in April than died in combat during the United States’ 19-year war in Afghanistan.

These deaths do not rest solely on the president’s shoulders, of course. China’s communist regime bears much of the responsibility for refusing to warn the world of the horrors unfolding in its country. But even this raises the question of why Trump was praising China’s communist regime in late January.

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“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus,” the president tweeted. “The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. . . . In particular, on behalf of the American People I want to thank President Xi!” Trump’s admiration of China’s “transparency” had to be particularly galling to administration officials who spent that month trying to get Xi’s regime to share virus samples and health-care data that could have greatly helped prepare America.

Even Trump’s toothless travel ban likely had little effect on the disease’s spread. At least 430,000 people have streamed into the United States from China since the outbreak, including some 40,000 travelers after the so-called ban was put in place. Making matters worse, Trump ignored health-care officials calling for the shutdown of European travel. He listened instead to his treasury secretary, who worried that such a ban could spook financial markets. It would be six more weeks before Trump stopped travel from Europe. The impact of the delay was devastating for New York.

While the president’s supporters frantically search for errant predictions among Democrats or members of the press, their efforts are undercut by Trump himself, who insists on proving every night just how ill-suited he is for his job. The man he will likely be competing against in November’s election warned Americans months ago that the coronavirus would get worse. “To be blunt,” the presumptive Democratic nominee wrote in USA Today, “I am concerned that the Trump administration’s shortsighted policies have left us unprepared for a dangerous epidemic that will come sooner or later.”

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Biden’s warning was all too prescient. The United States now finds itself in the worst crisis since World War II with a leader less suited for the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the office. Any hope that Trump can somehow rise to this once-in-a-lifetime challenge with even a modicum of competence would be the same sort of magical thinking that has plagued this country since the outbreak of this terrible disease.

Four months of delusional decisions coming from the White House have not produced a miracle cure. Instead, the country is more vulnerable than ever to a deadly pandemic and a debilitating financial collapse. As long as Donald Trump remains in the White House, the crisis that stalks our land will only get worse.