After doing a brief, weeklong impression of a semiresponsible human being, on Monday, Donald Trump got back to the business of being a reckless, anti-science moron, floating the idea that we should end this social-distancing business sooner rather than later in order to “save” the economy from the coronavirus. (We’re using scare quotes here because apparently the president hasn’t considered the fact that if hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans die, the economy will be in worse shape than it is now.) Following his National Economic Council chairman’s declaration that “we’re gonna have to make some difficult trade-offs,” i.e. we’re going to have to let some people die so the stock market can live, Trump told reporters during an evening press conference that while the death toll is “bad,” and “the numbers are going to increase with time,” we’re “going to be opening our country up for business, because our country was meant to be open.“ That suggestion was obviously horrifying to people who still take the word of health experts over that of a brainless carnival barker and who understand that extreme social distancing needs to last for at least several months if not longer. One person who thought it was downright inspired? Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who is of the opinion that old people, i.e. those most at risk, should volunteer to die to save the economy.

Appearing on Fox News, Patrick told Tucker Carlson, “No one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’” But if they had? “If that is the exchange, I’m all in,” Patrick said. He continued: “That doesn’t make me noble or brave or anything like that. I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country, like me, I have six grandchildren, that what we all care about and what we love more than anything are those children. And I want to live smart and see through this, but I don’t want the whole country to be sacrificed…I’ve talked to hundreds of people, Tucker, and just in the last week, making calls all the time, and everyone says pretty much the same thing. That we can’t lose our whole country, we’re having an economic collapse. I’m also a small businessman, I understand it. And I talk with businesspeople all the time, Tucker. My heart is lifted tonight by what I heard the president say because we can do more than one thing at a time, we can do two things. So my message is let’s get back to work, let’s get back to living. Let’s be smart about it and those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country, don’t do that, don’t ruin this great America.”