.CNN ANALYSIS: Three months in — after a million infections, nearly 60,000 US deaths and a potential economic depression — it's still unclear whether President Donald Trump grasps the gravity of the coronavirus crisis
The man who said he knew more about ISIS than the generals and claimed to have stunned dumfounded aides with his scientific acuity prides himself on a mystical instinct to make right calls.
The President's deflections on Tuesday are typical of his wider political method of evading responsibility by bending the truth and of creating distractions. They play into what is apparently his most pressing concern — massaging his own reputation. Such tactics helped him ride out the Russia scandal and impeachment.
Doubts about the seriousness of the administration's response were also revealed in a more trivial, yet still telling, episode on Tuesday when Vice President Mike Pence flouted CDC guidance and chose not to wear a facemask during a visit to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Pence explained that he is frequently tested for Covid-19 so was unlikely to be an asymptomatic carrier of the disease.
"I think what happens is it's going to go away. This is going to go away. And whether it comes back in a modified form in the fall, we'll be able to handle it," he said in remarks that may again amount to underestimating a potential threat. "Many States moving to SAFELY & QUICKLY reopen!" Trump tweeted on Tuesday, showing little appreciation of the huge gamble with health and lives governors are taking without the safety net of a blanket testing program Trump has declined to provide.A wrenching national conversation is needed, ideally led by the President, about the relative impact of the pandemic and the job destroying lockdowns ordered to stop its spread.
"There are big believers in testing, and then there are some governors that don't feel as strongly about it at all," Trump, said Monday.
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