Trump channeling Baghdad Bob at pandemic briefings

Every time Trump appears at the podium for his daily pandemic briefing, I’m transported back to 2003 for the daily press briefings of Baghdad Bob. For those too young or uninformed, Baghdad Bob was Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi spokesman for the collapsing Iraqi regime under an avalanche of US bombs and tanks. With US gunfire raging in the background, Bob would declare US soldiers were committing suicide by the hundreds, were going to surrender or be incinerated in their tanks. When asked for evidence he replied “authentic sources…many authentic sources”.

Like Baghdad Bob, Trump makes delusional claims. He says no one saw the pandemic approaching but that he called it a pandemic before anyone else. Early on he said it was 15 cases soon going down to one, and that it would disappear like "a miracle". He’s claimed that every American can get a test, when it’s closer to 1%. In the country with arguably the poorest pandemic response in the industrialized world, he calls his response a perfect “10 out of 10”. But Trump goes beyond Baghdad Bob’s delusions to launch petty personal attacks against reporters, governors or anyone who tries to reel him back to reality. He retweets a call to fire his most respected, decent disease specialist, who then receives death threats. He publicly supports extremist financed public protests endangering the lives of the protesters and delaying a sane, unified response to the pandemic.

Baghdad Bob was hilarious. DC Don is deadly.