As a factual matter, the H1N1 outbreak in 2009 killed more like 12,500 people in the U.S., total. That’s a number of deaths COVID-19 is likely to surpass today, before it has peaked in this country. And the Obama administration responded to it much more quickly and effectively than the Trump administration responded to coronavirus.

But it’s the attack on the government watchdog who produced the troubling report that’s more worrisome than the routine lies about the Obama administration. Christi Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general whose name is on the report, “began her career with OIG in 1999 as a Program Evaluator and later served as a Senior Program Analyst in OIG’s Office of Evaluation and Inspections.” So it’s not that she is in the Trump administration as an Obama holdover. She’s a career official who has served under both Democrats and Republicans. Grimm “has received the Secretary’s Award for Excellence in Management and the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency Award for Excellence in Management.”

Of course, excellence in management is pretty much anathema to Donald Trump, even when that excellence is not a source of criticism of Trump’s own terrible management.

And it’s telling that Trump wishes Grimm had talked not to the hospitals fighting the crisis patient by patient but to the people who answer to him and could be relied on to praise him regardless of the facts.

As predictable as Trump’s attack on Grimm is, we can’t just roll our eyes and say “of course he did.” Trump is actively working to create a government that answers only to him and will not provide factual information about his administration’s failures, where they exist. Intimidating the public servants who are tasked with telling those truths is part of that broader effort, and it’s dangerous.