Quote:As of this morning, according to NBC News' latest tally, there are nearly 1.27 million cases of the coronavirus in the United States. The death toll, meanwhile, is nearly 77,000.
It was against this backdrop that Donald Trump appeared on Fox News this morning and offered yet another death toll forecast.
Quote:"They said, 'Sir, you have to close the country.' Nobody ever heard of a thing like this, but they were right because if I didn't we would have lost 2 million, 2 and a half million, maybe more than that people, and we'll be at 100,000, 110,000 -- the lower level of what was projected if we did the shutdown."
Let's take a moment to review the last few weeks.
On Monday, April 20, the president said he believed the overall American death toll from the pandemic would be between 50,000 and 60,000 people. Later that week, the president's forecast had already been exposed as tragically wrong.
Exactly one week later, on Monday, April 27, Trump said the overall American death toll would "probably" be between 60,000 and 70,000 people. It took about four days for this projection to be discredited, too.
On Wednesday, April 29, the president suggested the number of fatalities in the United States could be as low as 65,000. Predictably, we soon after passed that projected total.
On Sunday, May 3, Trump acknowledged that he was moving the goalposts again. "I used to say 65,000," the Republican said, pointing to a total he promoted just a few days earlier. "And now I'm saying 80,000 or 90,000."
All of which led to this morning's revised total of between 100,000 and 110,000 fatalities.
Circling back to our earlier coverage, when I say I don't know why Trump keeps doing this, I'm not being coy or facetious. I honestly have no idea. There is no upside to a president, every few days, presenting a new projected death toll, seeing the actual number climb, and then starting the process anew.
Benen
I hate to contradict Steve Benen but there is a way to understand this which does make a sort of sense.
As Jay Rosen noted recently, if at the outset of this pandemic Trump would have brought in Obama, Bill Clinton and Bush to help with the issue and if he'd put the government agencies tasked with handling a pandemic front and center and given them maximal support and if he'd coordinated with and supported state efforts the consequence would have not merely included a far less severe medical and economic situation but would also surely have put his approval ratings around 60%.
Of course, he did none of that because of his unique and serious pathologies. Instead, he just applied his usual tactics of projecting himself as an incomparable and near-god like figure under attack from the forces of evil (the evil ones define and display themselves by criticism of the god figure).
What Trump gets right is in presuming that his base is actually stupid enough to buy into this story. He can tell bald-faced lies and obvious exaggerations and contradict himself within days or hours or even within a single speech and his base will just shape their thinking and opinions to match what he's just said or done.
To be sure, because Trump is a sociopath and a pathological narcissist of the sort he is, no other option is open to him. And though his national approval ratings are and always have been very low, he has a good bead on his base supporters and their equally pathological and child-like foolishness.
