Something you’ve probably gleaned by now is that a significant amount of the blame re: the Trump administration’s horribly botched coronavirus response can be attributed to Donald Trump’s obsession with the stock market and not wanting to do anything to upset it. Oh sure, gutting pandemic teams and trying to keep his poll numbers up clearly played a role, but the president’s singular focus on what the Dow Jones Industrial Average does on any given day—which he sees as a barometer for his success—quite obviously allowed the virus to gain a foothold in the United States. By mid-February, for instance, the president had reportedly told advisers not to “do or say anything that would further spook the markets,” despite the fact that the exact time to do and say things was, like, weeks prior. After weeks of subsequent inaction and denial, the president supposedly came around to the idea that he should do something last week, after the stock market had its biggest one-day crash since Black Monday. Yet it’s clear that Trump only thinks he should do something insomuch as he doesn’t like seeing the markets go down; he’s not, for instance, following any of the guidelines the CDC has set out re: not shaking hands with dozens of people a day, nor is he listening to his own experts when they say things like, This is bad and even young and healthy people could get sick.

Instead he remains solely focused on what the markets are doing. How do we know this? First of all, per CNN, he sent an autographed chart of the stock market’s Friday gains to supporters and lawmakers, like the giant national embarrassment he is: