Well Trump actually is perfectly aware of the Covid risks, he is not that stupid. He really just panders to increasingly smaller radical public (and thaw would be his demise), while the moderate republicans kinda more aligned with what Pence does and says. Trump made a wrong bet, and he is going to lose.
I would say Trump is that stupid, either due to some mental degeneration or perhaps simply never being told "no" in his life. Covid should have made for a shoe-in second term. Give televised speeches reassuring and leading through a tough time, act on the advice of public health experts, and deflect the economic damage as doing the best we can. The wartime president boost. I think he could have even switched to this as late as May and still come out ahead. Instead, he continues to double down on pretending the entire problem doesn't exist.
If he was "that" stupid and thought it is just flu he would never close borders with China, he'd never sign that money stimulus bill, he'd never install Covid task force; he would never have done so many things - so he clearly understood that Covid is not flu. But politically agree - he made a huge mistake.
Of course he would close borders - he thinks trade wars are easy to win and it’s an easy sell to his racist base.
Of course he’d sign The stimulus bill - it made looting the country even easier.
Of course he’d have a task force - he’d liquidated those who could bring him to task (and incidentally do the rest of the country some good) and a task force is an opportunity to sell appointments on hand and then dispose of them with little ceremony later. Oh yeah right that task force that isn’t exactly setting policy these days.
When you have no shame, no decency and make every decision as a means to win the zero sum game immediately in front of you, well, you don’t have to be smart, you don’t need to have a plan and the most opportunistic scum will leap to your aid as a means to facilitate their own graft.
This political mistake is little different than all of his other shitty, petty, and unpardonable catastrophes. Treason big and small.
Trump is stupid, but he is also a germophobe. Bolsonaro is stupid and not a germophobe. Putin, of course, is neither, but quite happy to see the rest of the world in chaos.
