It requires seizing control of the narrative, shutting down anything resembling accountability and defining your political opponents as the enemy of all Americans.

Bush and Trump had the same public relations goal: to turn an unprecedented national challenge into a story in which the president was the hero, saving us all. So it’s no accident that so much of what the administration is doing to minimize the political damage from Trump’s mishandling of this crisis sounds so familiar.

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Let’s break down the components.

Step 1: Claim that no one could have seen this coming. As this blog has noted, the White House is attempting to argue that a pandemic of this sort would have been impossible to predict, and therefore Trump’s impossibly slow response and months of denial that the coronavirus was anything to worry about are perfectly justifiable.

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Just as Bush got an intelligence briefing a month before 9/11 titled “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.,” Trump had plenty of warning of the possibility of a pandemic, and it’s vital to make everyone forget.

Step 2: Redefine success. Contrary to his previous insistence that only a few Americans will die from covid-19, Trump has accepted projections putting the likely death toll in the range of 100,000 to 240,000. But he is now claiming that these shocking numbers will constitute a praiseworthy victory on his part.

To make that argument, Trump has seized on an Imperial College study estimating that if no social distancing or other steps were taken — the “do nothing” option — 2.2 million Americans could die from the virus. By establishing this as the reference point and repeating it over and over, Trump is attempting to define anything less as a triumph of his extraordinary leadership. As he put it on Monday:

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If we did nothing, you could lose 2.2 — up to two point — and maybe beyond, I don’t know. Maybe beyond. But 2.2 million people if we did nothing. And I can’t tell you what the unfortunate final toll is going to be, but it’s going to be a very small fraction of that. So we’re doing an awfully good job, I think, with what we’re doing.

But the inescapable fact is that an unspeakable 100,000 to 240,000 deaths is the current estimate of a successful mitigation precisely because the government’s actions were so slow in January and February, at the time Trump was insisting the virus didn’t pose a threat and everything was under control.

Step 3: Repetition, repetition, repetition: Bush officials may have repeated “weapons of mass destruction" a million times, but nobody understands the power of repetition more than Trump. So you’ll hear Trump officials and allies repeat that 2.2 million number endlessly. In his Sunday briefing Trump said “2.2 million” no fewer than 20 times.

Trump will also likely come up with some catchphrase to argue he is both blameless and triumphant, something akin to “No collusion, no obstruction” on Russia or “No quid pro quo” on Ukraine. Perhaps it will be “You’d be dead without me.”

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Step 4: Fight accountability and stonewall investigations. Not long after the 9/11 attacks and while Bush was still riding high in the polls, Congress endeavored to investigate exactly why the attack was successful and how a repeat could be prevented. Bush plainly saw such an investigation as a profound political threat, and what ensued was years of stonewalling and obstruction of both congressional inquiries and the bipartisan commission established to investigate the attacks.

As we saw during impeachment, the Trump administration believes it is immune from any congressional oversight whatsoever. Trump’s lawyers have also argued that courts have no right to adjudicate disputes between the executive and legislative branches, which would mean that if Trump decides to stonewall, nobody can stop him.

You can be sure they will invoke this constitutionally bonkers position as they refuse to comply with any future effort to investigate how and why they failed so miserably to prepare for this pandemic. And congressional Republicans will support it without reservation.

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Step 5: Attack any criticism as not just partisan but also driven by indefensible motives. This, too, was part of the Bush plan: If you raised questions about the administration’s decisions, you were on the side of terrorists. I can already hear Kellyanne Conway saying, “Anyone who criticizes our president obviously wanted 2.2 million people to die.”

Perhaps even more importantly, they will seek to define the issue as partisan, as a way of activating party loyalty to keep Republicans from questioning Trump’s performance. If only a Democrat could think he was doing less than a perfect job, Republicans will be more likely to stand behind him.

There is a simple political reality that the administration and Trump’s reelection campaign well understand (as do Democrats): These twin public health and economic crises are the most profound challenge our country has faced in most of our lifetimes. If the public decides that Trump has failed to properly confront them, he will lose in November.

Every day from now until the election, Trump and his allies will be working to prevent the electorate from reaching that conclusion.

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