Donald Trump isn’t interested in how many Americans die in terms of lost family members and friends. He has zero concern about the loss of potential, the emotional anguish, or the long-term trauma of a grieving nation. Trump cares about defining the “win.”

By standing in front of a chart that showed not only a projection of 100,000 to 240,000 dead, but also a peak indicating that 2 million might die if the government did nothing at all, Trump wasn’t being “sober” and he wasn’t finally “getting it.” He wasn’t only demonstrating one of the skills that he’s utilized over and over, seemingly with zero political cost: Moving the goal posts. This is the same guy who, three weeks earlier, said that the number of cases in the United States was on its way to zero, and who dismissed the estimated rate of death because his “hunch” was that it wasn’t even as bad as the flu. He tossed a marker out there on the sand to say that 240,000 dead Americans isn’t just possible; it’s a “win.”

And he’s absolutely prepared to do it again. The IHME model is far from a full-blown attempt to simulate the course of the pandemic or model the crisis in detail. It’s a formula constrained by just a few values that takes some aspects of the curve seen during the initial COVID-19 outbreak in China and lays it over some basic numbers from the United States. That model has already proven iffy when it comes to predicting even very short-term events; over a four month period, it suggests that deaths in the U.S. could be anywhere from 40,000 to 178,000.

But there are many models out there that predict the real number is likely to be beyond anything being kicked out by IHME’s low-information curve fitting. For one thing, not only does that model anticipate states that haven’t so far moved to enforce social distancing will do so right away—it assumes the effectiveness of these measures will be similar to the results of the draconian program of isolation and quarantine that was enforced in Hubei Province. With a brace of Republican governors still using their state’s citizens in a life-threatening game of chicken to prove their conservative bona fides, it seems impossible that the U.S. will achieve the success with suppression that was demonstrated in China.

As The Washington Post reports, experts are highly dubious about the values Trump is presenting in his “somber” moment. The 100,000 to 200,000 figures Trump is showing could easily become a low-end figure if the United States doesn’t demonstrate an ability to halt the skyrocketing growth of cases and prevent health care systems across the nation from being crushed under an overwhelming wave. In which case … Trump will stand in front of a chart showing 500,000 cases and explain how that is an even bigger win.

In fact, just a day after making it clear that he thought anything under a quarter of a million American deaths was dancing-in-the-street good news, Trump found a new go-to reference: “Look, we had the Civil War,” said Trump. “We lost 600,000 people, right? You know, we lose more here potentially than you lose in world wars as a country, so there’s nothing positive, there’s nothing great about it.”

If Trump wants to find anything bigger, he’ll have to go outside U.S. history for his numbers. Or maybe he could start to talk about how many Native Americans were killed by European diseases. There might be some particularly bitter irony to be found there.

In any case, Politico reports that Trump’s team is hard at work on the numbers. Not in the sense of preventing deaths, but in finding the right metaphor. The proper talking point. The way to make this “good” for Trump. That’s why Trump has been talking “medical war” in his last few appearances; it’s a phrase that got a green light from his propaganda team. Trump’s White House staff is searching through FDR speeches for bits of World War II phrasing that Trump might borrow. They’re also reading books on the 1918 flu outbreak … only, not for clues on how to fight the crisis.

They’re “digging through American history” and hoping “to find analogs” to the current situation so that they can perform the one vital act of the Trump White House: They want to “protect their boss’s legacy.”

And, by God, if that means making a good thing out of a million American deaths, they will make that sacrifice.