PSYCHO FANCIES SYCOPHANCY:

[A]nother factor was the existence of "a positive feedback loop of overly rosy assessments and data from advisers and Fox News." Trump, a malignant narcissist, is known to lash out at aides who provide him bad news so it appears that they've fed him a steady diet of the kind of Pollyannaish stories that are a mainstay of the conservative media's coverage of the pandemic, and of his regime's response to it.

Trump is running a historically awful campaign for re-election. At present, his twin pitches for a second term are his ability to pass a rudimentary test designed to diagnose dementia and a promise to deploy thousands of unidentifiable and poorly trained federal paramilitaries to American cities, against the protests of state and local officials, in the name of protecting statues and federal buildings from vandalism.

For anyone who consumes a balanced media diet, these strategic choices are inexplicable. While it's true that as we approach 150,000 mostly avoidable deaths from the pandemic and millions continue to file for unemployment, he doesn't have a lot to run on, a competent candidate would make an effort to show that he understands how this crisis is impacting people and demonstrate that he's focused on containing the outbreak and rebuilding-whether or not it's true. This is politics 101.

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