Our President Is (Even More) Deranged

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The self-absorption of our president is truly astonishing:

More than 2,000 people have already died and Anthony Facuci estimated this morning that the final death toll would be 100-200,000. In the midst of this, Trump is busy insulting the CEO of GM; fighting with governors he doesn’t like; dithering about the Defense Production Act; declining to bother with a plan to tell manufacturers of medical goods where to ship their stuff; explicitly warning that people have to treat him nicely or they won’t get any federal assistance; claiming that he’s going to quarantine New York and then backing off; lying endlessly about the state of testing; and now bragging about the ratings of his press briefings.

From any other human being on the planet this would be considered deranged behavior. Can you imagine what we’d be saying if it were Saddam Hussein bragging about his TV ratings in the middle of a pandemic? But from Trump it’s just normal.

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, this is yet another reason why the cable nets need to stop carrying Trump’s briefings live. We already know that they’re full of misinformation, but now we even know why: Trump cares only about high ratings, and he knows he has to amp up the eccentricity every day to get it. That’s what motivates him, not a desire to provide information to the public.

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Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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