Trump's frightening claim of 'total' authority

The United States of America faces two critical emergencies. One is the coronavirus pandemic. The other is the presidency of Donald Trump.

The latter assertion isn't just linked to the Trump administration's well-documented mishandling of the pandemic response. Indeed, Trump is not the first president to be caught short by an unexpected crisis. But other presidents — FDR after Pearl Harbor, George W. Bush after 9/11, Barack Obama after the economy collapsed in 2008 — brought their focus to bear on meeting the great challenges before them. But as anybody who watched Trump's latest bonkers news briefing on Monday can attest, beating back a virus that threatens public health is a priority for Trump only to the extent that it helps him assert his power and preserve his own image.

Trump used the briefing to show a campaign-style video defending his management of the pandemic, featuring glowing quotes from governors. "Everything we did was right," he told reporters. That isn't true: Reports have shown that Trump was slow to take action on the virus, diverting early discussions to talk of vaping and accusing advisers of being alarmist when they warned the virus might require the shutdowns we're now seeing. The president's overwhelming need to brag and burnish his reputation is unseemly at the best of times. That he insists on prioritizing it when thousands of Americans are dying of COVID-19 speaks to his rare moral and spiritual bankruptcy. We now have a definitive answer to an old question: Does character matter in a president? Yes, it does, and Trump lacks it completely.

But the most troubling part of the president's Monday performance came when Trump said he might order state governors to ease shelter-at-home rules and begin to re-open their economies. Trump is likely pushing for this because he fears facing re-election while the economy is in tatters thanks to widespread lockdowns. But experts fear that lifting the lockdowns too quickly could lead to a new wave of coronavirus illnesses and deaths.