Other than the major gaping hole in this new "task force"—the seeming lack of any voice who might tell them which of their proposals are medically insane—there are two other reasons to be especially alarmed here.

The first is that it's fairly clear that the task force's mandate is to start reopening things next month, whether that is advisable or not. Trump has signaled, repeatedly, that he believes we are on the home stretch of a pandemic that experts warn will likely be with us for at least another year, and he is bent on declaring victory, then campaigning on the same. By separating out Trump's economic voices from the medical experts, Team Trump can give those advisers a weight equal to government pandemic voices—with, perhaps, double the daily rally time for Trump.

Frustrated with the slow pace of a global pandemic and irritated with the experts trying to explain it to them, the Team Trump response is to start a new task force, this one with blackjack, and—sorry, this one comprising solely advisers who agree with them.

So we can expect the "economic" task force to quickly be promoted alongside—or perhaps to eclipse—the current Pence-led Birx-Fauci group. It will also provide a venue for the Peter Navarros of the White House to promote fraudulent medical cures and similar without having a Fauci alongside to rebut; that is really the only reason you might separate out the two efforts.

That brings us to the second major reason for alarm: Trump’s continued devotion to surrounding himself with some of the biggest idiots in America. If anything, the new "task force" seems bent on doubling their ranks. CNN reports that the administration is eyeing nongovernment types such as CEOs and "even major sports teams and well-known athletes" to fill out the group. Floated as the task force's leader:

Art Laffer.

Yes, that Art Laffer. The same. The napkin guy.

Now, Art Laffer's prescriptions for "reopening" the economy have been, in recent works, what for simplicity we shall call Batshit Insane. A partial Reuters rundown of his recommendations: "Tax non-profits. Cut the pay of public officials and professors." Laffer is an opponent of stimulus and relief to workers left unemployed by business closures during the pandemic, saying we instead need to "make it more unattractive to be unemployed."

Instead, he's a proponent of a "payroll tax holiday" for those who still have jobs. That and taxing nonprofits. And ... cutting professors' pay, for some reason?

To say these are not serious policy prescriptions is an understatement. To say this is setting America on fire for the insurance money is closer to the mark—though it still implies more gravitas than Laffer’s farcical nonsense deserves.

So no, none of this looks like good news. As the Trump administration zeros out federal funds for COVID-19 testing, a vital component of actually getting businesses back open and the economy back on track, the Trump Team's latest reactionary twitch is to start up a new coronavirus task force that leaves out all the irritating medical expertise of the current version and is instead focused on cutting salaries, raising taxes, and putting a knife to the back of unemployed workers, telling them to find new work during the pandemic or else.

The only way it does not end in disaster is if by some miracle the pandemic does indeed disappear over the next few weeks, as Trump is demanding of it. If not? All hell breaks loose. Yet again.