We have just gained valuable new insights into how Trump views his daily briefings. His own aides tell the New York Times that he rarely attends expert task force meetings before them, and mainly prepares by scanning talking points hastily compiled for him just before.

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Trump sees these briefings as a “substitute for the rallies he can no longer attend,” and relishes each day’s “question-and-answer bullying session with reporters,” the Times reports. And so, the briefings are an opportunity to energize his base for reelection purposes while discrediting the news media.

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“I’m the president and you’re fake news,” Trump seethed at a reporter on Thursday, enraged over being asked if he believes his role in informing the public obliges him to be careful and accurate with information about public health.

Thus, Trump daily tries to get the American people to see reporters not as professionals who sometimes commit errors while working to inform the public in good faith at a moment of extreme crisis, but as corrupt and out to get him.

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Trump is telling us to believe the worst about people in the media, who themselves are toiling amid very difficult conditions. He is instructing us to believe him instead — “I’m the president” — even as he feels zero obligation to get a full expert download before communicating on such an urgent matter.

It’s not working.

The new Associated Press/Ipsos poll finds that only 28 percent of Americans “regularly” get information about coronavirus from the president, and only 23 percent have high levels of trust in the information he provides. Some 54 percent have little to no trust. Meanwhile, other polls have found far higher percentages do trust the media.

Trump tries to turn people against governors

Trump’s efforts to turn the American people against governors imposing restrictions to protect public health are also failing — spectacularly.

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The new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds that 86 percent of Americans believe social-distancing and stay-at-home measures are “responsible government policies that are saving lives.” And 72 percent say a “bigger danger” is loosening such measures too quickly, spreading coronavirus faster, while only 27 percent want to relax them quickly to protect the economy.

We know Trump has been attacking governors over social distancing to divide the country for his own corrupt purposes. To whatever degree Trump may genuinely believe reopening the economy more quickly would be better for the country overall, we can be certain this isn’t the prime motivator behind such attacks.

After all, they are primarily directed at Democratic governors. And he has not just questioned their policies; he has encouraged his supporters to see their rule as illegitimate, deliberately fueling civil discord at a moment of national crisis, in the belief that energizing them will help boost his reelection prospects.

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That’s also a major bust.

The ABC poll finds that 82 percent of Republicans also see these measures as “responsible” policy. Trump is actively encouraging supporters to view good-faith efforts to protect the public good as a premeditated attempt to harm them, but enormous percentages of Republicans (many surely living in blue and swing states, under such measures) reject this.

We’ve seen Trump encourage this again and again. Early on, Trump dismissed Democratic and media warnings about the severity of the coronavirus threat, and about his government’s failing response to it, as a deliberate effort to harm him, and as a “hoax.”

Those warnings turned out to be right. But here again Trump urged his supporters — and the American people — to believe the worst, that officials and news organizations sounding warnings in the interests of the public could only be operating from base and corrupt motives.

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We know Trump’s deliberations over public health precautions have come completely unmoored from any meaningful conception of the public good. In February, when a top health official alerted the country to prepare for the threat, Trump raged at her for rattling the markets, which he views as politically crucial.

And when Trump’s own experts urged him at that time to recommend social distancing, the White House let crucial weeks slip away amid a preoccupation with “messaging.”

The public is coming through

By the way, the new AP poll finds that fewer than half of Americans — 43 percent — are extremely or very worried that they or someone in their family will get infected. Yet far higher percentages still support social distancing measures and view them as sincerely intentioned efforts to protect the public good.

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Which suggests there may be a whole lot of people out there who are hewing to these views not necessarily just to protect themselves, but also in a more public-spirited sense.

This moment is imposing great social, psychological and economic hardship. Yet untold numbers of Americans continue to do their part, and will not get mesmerized by Trump’s magical chaos powers out of seeing their local officials as working in good faith to protect all their constituents.

All of this is happening largely in spite of Trump’s most determined efforts, not because of them.

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