White House, Petri Dish

 

 

"The reason is clear enough: For Trump, shirking daily mask use seems like a culture-war triumph. A mask is both an emblem of the nanny state and a visual symbol of a continuing public-health calamity that could ultimately cost him reelection—an unwelcome reminder of the death toll and economic carnage that have destroyed the fundamental argument he’d hoped to make to voters. “Wearing the mask would be to admit that he was wrong in his initial assessment of the seriousness of  COVID-19,” Mary Trump, the president’s niece and the author of a new book about him, told me.

Trump is desperate for the pandemic to end, but because it has spun out of control under his watch, the president and his circle have alighted on another approach: denial."

 read newstory by peter nicholas