One ex-White House official explained that Trump needs to keep up his feud with the press to distract those among his political base in “flyover states” from his complete failure to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously.

“He knows what he’s saying sounds crazy to the average person. And he knows what he’s saying is unfair to the press. He’s not stupid,” the official said. “But he’s willing to do it because he recognizes that there’s a group of people that are in the flyover states… that are backing what he’s saying and doing and they like it,” the official continued, but cautioned that Trump’s strategy of attacking the press rather than taking responsibility will only be effective while the coronavirus pandemic is not killing large numbers of people in so-called “flyover country.”

“Right now, the flyover states aren’t dying — that’s why he’s at the 60 per cent approval. But when they start dying, that’s going to be a big problem for him because he did miss it,” he explained.

The official called Trump’s failure to act on his advisors’ warnings “the biggest intelligence failure in the history of the country.”

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Michael Steele, the former Maryland Lieutenant Governor, said he thought the plan was part of Trump’s push “to try to actualize an arbitrary deadline that he has himself admitted he likes.”

“There is no data-driven reason to believe that on April 12, this thing is over or that this virus has recessed to the point that governors will relax the prohibitions on congregations are congregating in large numbers,” he added.

“Every governor will make a decision, and as a former lieutenant governor, I can tell you that when we were facing a crisis, we welcomed federal help but we did not want federal interference… because the President and the federal government are not on the same level as governor and his county executives and their mayors and so forth, who are having to deal with this in real time in real neighborhoods.”

He cautioned Trump against making following the promised guidelines a condition for the sort of federal aid that governors have been asking for in recent days, noting that such an arrangement was the exact scenario which Democrats used to make the case for removing him during his impeachment trial.

“I cannot believe anyone in the White House would be that slow and that unmindful of what the narrative was just two months ago, but if the idea is to set up a quid pro quo for federal disaster response... that will force the state to act in a way that is not in the interest of its people, that’s going to be a recipe for disaster for this administration.”

www.independent.co.uk/...