There is no instinct there other than self-promotion. There is nothing but sociopathic devotion to his own genius, whether the rest of you live or die.

Here is the briefest of lists of the times Donald Trump stood in front of cameras and said the precise opposite of what the lying sociopath is now claiming. “We shut it down,” he said. We have it “very much under control,” he said. “It’s just one person coming in from China,” he said. Claims that his administration was failing to respond to the threat already sweeping through other nations was a “hoax,” he said.

And now: None of that happened. Your eyes were wrong. Your ears were wrong. There is only Dear Leader, triumphant, who knew better than you all along. Who knew better than you, in fact, for years.

x Trump, who not a month ago characterized Democratic criticism of the coronavirus response as a "hoax," now claims, "I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic." pic.twitter.com/6GTpZ59b75 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 17, 2020

x "I've been talking about this for many years, long before I decided to run for president, I've been talking about this" -- Trump spent a month downplaying the coronavirus! pic.twitter.com/yWBmAPqqD6 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 17, 2020

He is a monster. He is a would-be god-king man-child dictator devoted only to self-fluffing. He is a liar.

At any point, Republicans could have rid themselves of a sociopathic liar simply by treating him as such. He could have been removed for any one of a dozen obvious crimes of self-dealing. Republicans could have simply weakened his power by stepping ever so slightly out of line. By refusing to go along with his lies, during all the times he said them. The so-called “conservatives” that lined up at his heels could have remained “conservative” rather than rededicating their movement to believe whatever it was an ignorant manchild last said, then retooling it the next week when he said something different. But no. They did not.

And now we are in a national crisis—a worldwide pandemic sure to kill many, and uncontrolled and even untested for during the weeks we had available to us. Behind him, his staff still devotes large segments of their preparedness warnings to instead massaging his own ego, lest he spiral even farther downward. At the front, the most incompetent leader in United States history boosts himself, claims once again that the history of last week and last month did not happen as Americans remember it, and preens that no matter how many citizens may end up dying now, he has done the greatest job anyone could ever have done, because he knows better and has always known better than everyone else combined.

This is Mitch McConnell’s fault. This is on Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. This is Fox News, a clear and present danger to their own viewers and to the nation. This is on them, all of it. All of it.