Mock toughness is this administration*’s greatest bluff, because it happens to be this president*’s greatest bluff. The president* who got famous “firing” celebrities on a television show generally leaves the actual task to underlings, because face-to-face confrontations make him nervous. Anything that scares him—like, say, a worldwide pandemic that now can fairly be said to center in the United States—is wished away or denied, the way a child pretends he’s invisible when he’s only hiding under the covers. If the administration* can’t bully its way through a situation, it usually folds like a five-dollar accordion. When the going gets tough, the president* finds someone to blame. A pair of stories this week illustrate this better than ever.

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The first involves Vice President Mike Pence’s inexcusable stroll, unmasked, through the Mayo Clinic on Tuesday. (Why the clinic let him through the door without a mask is another question entirely.) When asked about this grotesque breach of protocol, the head of the White House’s coronavirus task force replied, according to The Week:

"As Vice President of the United States, I'm tested for the coronavirus on a regular basis, and everyone who is around me is tested for the coronavirus," Pence said later Tuesday, citing CDC guidance that says masks help stop people who have the coronavirus from spreading it. "I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to be here, to be able to speak to these researchers, these incredible health care personnel, and look them in the eye and say thank you."

Yes, that is the vice president* of the United States, and the White House point man on the greatest public-health crisis in a century, admitting that he doesn’t know the difference between a mask and a blindfold. It makes a public mockery of everything Pence and his task force allegedly are doing. It makes a mockery of all the people who have upended their lives on his advice.

OK, so Mike Pence is a bag of hammers. We’ve known that for years. But it’s hard not to conclude that his boneheaded recklessness on Tuesday was prompted by Pence’s desire to prove to the president*, who’s already said he won’t wear a mask because it poses a danger to his perpetually threatened manhood, that Pence is on the team. In other words, Pence didn’t have the simple decency to appear masked in a hospital clinic in the middle of a pandemic because, in this administration*, simple decency is an act of courage beyond Mike Pence’s capabilities. He has the gallows in one eye and Nikki Haley in the other.

The second example comes from Gabriel Sherman’s latest spelunking into White House politics for Vanity Fair. Mostly, the piece is about how policymaking down in Camp Runamuck has devolved into the hands of the president*’s son-in-law. The Dauphin, of course, is a cold, vengeful spalpeen who could screw up a two-car funeral if you spotted him the hearse. But, again, that’s not our concern here at the moment. Instead, we should look at another anecdote involving the president* and the Trumpist governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.

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Florida was a test case of his magical thinking about the novel coronavirus: That it was temporary, that warm weather would make it disappear. But eight Florida residents had already died from COVID-19 and more than 400 had been diagnosed. “Given the elderly population, if that took off, it would be a nightmare,” a person close to Trump told me. At an adviser’s urging, Trump called DeSantis to tell him to shut down the beaches.

“Ron, what are you doing down there?” Trump said, according to a person briefed on the call.

“I can’t ban people from going on the beach,” DeSantis snapped, surprising Trump.

“These pictures look really bad to the rest of the country,” Trump said.

“Listen, we’re doing it the right way,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis’s intransigence backed Trump into a corner. The 41-year-old governor was a Trump protégé and a crucial ally in a must-win state. “Trump is worried about Florida, electorally,” said a Republican who spoke with Trump around this time. Trump did something he rarely does: He caved. He told DeSantis the beaches could stay open.

As is obvious, Florida has not done it the right way. DeSantis left the state open for spring break, guaranteeing that the virus got free airfare to places all over the country. The state just had its deadliest day on Tuesday while DeSantis was in Washington, meeting with the president* he previously had rolled like biscuit dough. This administration* has glass guts. Leadership: how does it work, anyway?

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