We’ve 98 days away from the election. Will Donald Trump’s numbers continue to tank? Will his approval rate continue to hover around 40% and never get any higher? Who knows. Of course I find it disturbing that it took a literal global pandemic and 150,000 dead Americans to make *some* people realize that Donald Trump is truly the f–king worst. But here we are. The people around Trump have finally made him understand that as long as the pandemic rages, he can’t pretend not to notice. He can’t pretend that the pandemic numbers are a hoax. The Washington Post did a detailed story about how Trump got it so wrong (spoiler: he’s a moron) and what led to his recent “change in tone.” Some highlights:

He got it wrong: Both President Trump’s advisers and operatives laboring to defeat him increasingly agree on one thing: The best way for him to regain his political footing is to wrest control of the coronavirus. In the six months since the deadly contagion was first reported in the United States, Trump has demanded the economy reopen and children return to school, all while scrambling to salvage his reelection campaign. But both allies and opponents agree he has failed at the one task that could help him achieve all of his goals — confronting the pandemic with a clear strategy and consistent leadership.

Why he got it so wrong: People close to Trump, many speaking anonymously to share candid discussions and impressions, say the president’s inability to wholly address the crisis is due to his almost pathological unwillingness to admit error; a positive feedback loop of overly rosy assessments and data from advisers and Fox News; and a penchant for magical thinking that prevented him from fully engaging with the pandemic.

He only began to care when “red states” began getting hit hard: In recent weeks, with at least 144,000 Americans now dead from the virus, the White House has attempted to overhaul — or at least rejigger — its approach. The administration has revived news briefings led by Trump himself and presented the president with projections showing how the virus is now decimating Republican states full of Trump voters. In the past couple of weeks, senior advisers began presenting Trump with maps and data showing spikes in coronavirus cases among “our people” in Republican states, a senior administration official said. They also shared projections predicting that virus surges could soon hit politically important states in the Midwest — including Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, the official said.

It would have been easy: “The irony is that if he’d just performed with minimal competence and just mouthed words about national unity, he actually could be in a pretty strong position right now, where the economy is reopening, where jobs are coming back,” said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to former president Barack Obama. “And he just could not do it.”

He was always the victim: He was overly preoccupied with his own sense of grievance, beginning many conversations casting himself as the blameless victim of the crisis. “This could have been stopped. It could have been stopped quickly and easily. But for some reason, it wasn’t, and we’ll figure out what that reason was,” Trump said Thursday, seemingly to simultaneously acknowledge his predicament while also trying to assign blame elsewhere.

[From The Washington Post]

I mean, we saw it in real time – Trump came close to celebrating the virus when Northern states were being hit hard, like New York. It was a political thing for him even back then, in March and April. Now that we’re in the tailend of July and Florida, Texas and other deep-South states are viral cesspools, NOW he cares. And that quote is insane – “This could have been stopped. It could have been stopped quickly and easily. But for some reason, it wasn’t, and we’ll figure out what that reason was.” I… actually laughed. He’s so stupid and he’s trying to kill us all. But I laughed.

Also, I don’t actually believe that if he had just mouthed words of unity and taken the pandemic seriously, he would be in a better position. Because he’s so self-defeating, petulant and incapable of looking at things long-term. He genuinely couldn’t do that.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red & Backgrid.