According to Bob Woodward, Donald Trump was aware of how dangerous Covid-19 was as far back as January, yet continued to downplay its severity. In the beginning of Feb., Trump told Woodward that the virus was “deadly stuff,” yet later in Feb., he proclaimed the virus would disappear like a miracle.
From day one, Donald Trump has used this pandemic for some perceived political gain. Even with all the scientific evidence of how bad this could become, he encouraged his (sometimes armed) base to protest restrictions put in place to flatten the curve of exposure. Yet, he only seemed to encourage these protests in Democrat-run states.
Of course, it was not necessary to encourage disobedience in Republican bastions. Governors, like Ron DeSantis, of FL, and Greg Abbot, of TX, have proven all too ready to listen to, and do, whatever Trump wants them to do, even at the expense of their citizenry. At a time when other (Democratically-controlled) states were beginning to get a handle on their outbreaks, Florida and Texas became the virus hot spots of the United States, and the world.
Trump claims that he downplayed the virus because he was worried about panic sweeping across the country. Of course, we know that panic did sweep across the US because of the high death rate from the virus. As of this writing, 194,679 Americans have died from Covid-19.
For Donald Trump, this has never been about protecting the American people. This has always been about him, like everything he does in his life. The pandemic gave him ample fodder to divide the nation, at a time when the President of the United States of America should have been fostering togetherness. Of course, it is hard to unify a nation when you consider more than half of it to be your enemy.
Edit: So… This has been on my mind all day, and I have been watching commentary on it as well. It has been suggested, and I believe this theory, that when Trump said he did not want to cause panic, he was not thinking about the American people. Rather, he was thinking about the stock market. In other words, he was thinking about himself.