This analysis was excerpted from the March 9 edition of CNN's Meanwhile in America, the daily email about US politics for global readers. Click here to read past editions and subscribe.



(CNN) Donald Trump is doing bang-up work fighting the coronavirus -- just ask him. "We've done a fantastic job," he said on Saturday, before confirmed US cases of the virus soared to more than 550.

A botched response or a related economic slump could damage his reelection hopes, so the US President appears to be intensely focused on downplaying the problem and publicly congratulating himself. Over the last few weeks, he's forecast infections on US soil will drop to zero, hoped for a "miracle" to drive the virus away, and predicted warm weather will kill it off. He keeps praising himself for halting arrivals from coronavirus-hit China weeks ago, and claimed on Friday that he had "stopped" the contagion -- even though the virus is already marching across America.

The President's crisis management hit a bizarre peak during his visit to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention on Friday. First he wondered why he should let a cruise ship carrying some infected Americans dock in California, causing the "numbers" of cases on US soil to go up. Then he embarked on a strange paean to his own supposed flair for science. "I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this?' Maybe I have a natural ability. I understand that whole world. I love that world. I really do."

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