President Trump began the seven-day stretch threatening — and then reneging on — a quarantine of the New York region. He ended it by announcing recommendations for everyone to wear face masks but stressed he would opt against sporting one himself.
In the days in between, Trump announced a 30-day extension of stringent social distancing guidelines (March 29), called into a freewheeling “Fox & Friends” gripe-a-thon (Monday), presented a dire assessment of how many Americans are expected to die of the coronavirus (Tuesday), launched a military operation against drug cartels (Wednesday) and stoked a feud with a senior senator from hard-hit New York (Thursday).
The novel coronavirus has decimated the economy, turned hospitals into battlefields and upended the daily lives of every American. But in Trump’s White House, certain symptoms remain: a president who governs as if producing and starring in a reality television show, with each day a new episode and each news cycle his own creation, a successive installment to be conquered. Continue reading.