On Monday, he said: “Nothing is shut down. Life and the economy go on.” Those are the words of a b.s. artist trying to gaslight his way through a pandemic.

No one close to Trump has the guts to say what needs to be said: Stop talking! Now. Don’t utter another word. Put your phone away. Go to Mar-a-Lago and play golf, which is to say, resume your normal schedule. He can have his Big Macs brought to him, as always. He just has to go dark.

Let Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who has just the right mix of bedside manner reassurance and give-it-to-me-straight gravitas, do the daily briefings. Let Vice President Mike Pence handle the logistics. Let Congress finish up with a package that will offer free testing and give financial relief to the most vulnerable. And allow career government servants — the deep state pros who will keep this listing ship of state from sinking over the next months — to do their jobs.

Trump looked at the sun during an eclipse and nothing happened to him, so maybe he feels invulnerable. But he also will never accept any responsibility for months of government inaction. As the writer David Frum said, “The rooster who took credit for the sunrise is outraged to be blamed for the sunset.”

In addition to credibility, a leader needs to express empathy. Trump is sociopathic on this front. In a visit to the hospital after the mass shooting in El Paso last year, he was incapable of showing simple human compassion to family members of victims; instead, he bragged about his crowd size from a previous rally.

He told the grieving widow of a slain American soldier that her husband “knew what he signed up for.” Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, the state hardest hit, “is a snake,” said the president.

In that bizarre appearance at the C.D.C. a week ago, Trump wore a silly campaign hat, patted himself on the back, and spoke nonsense about his medical expertise. It was like showing up at a funeral in beach clothes and asking what time is happy hour.