The key to understanding all the seemingly insane actions Donald Trump is taking is knowing that outcomes don't matter to him—he simply needs to be seen as "fighting" for something. Of course, outcomes in these cases mean death and destruction, so it actually matters a hell of a lot, just not to Trump.
That's why normal people keep thinking: “Why the hell is Trump pushing to reopen state economies when we clearly don't have the testing capacity to do it safely?” Multiple recent polls have shown the public doesn’t trust that it’s safe to get back to work, so to speak. But Trump doesn't care about outcomes/deaths, he simply wants to frame his position as one of fighting for the economy and, by extension, all the people who he and his right-wing foot soldiers claim are being oppressed by the governors. Thus, all the "LIBERATE" tweets last week inciting protests against stay-at-home orders by Democratic governors. (Somehow, Trump skipped over GOP governors who gave similar orders.)
Again, outcomes are beside the point. If the governors don't reopen their states, fine by Trump; when the economy is a disaster, he’ll blame governors. If they do reopen and death ensues, fine by Trump: He can blame the governors. If they reopen and all goes relatively well, fine by Trump: He'll say he was right all along. Fighting for anything at all is the perfect ploy as long as someone else is on the hook for your mistakes.
That's why no sane actor who cared about death would push to reopen the economy before implementing a sound national testing strategy. But for Trump, there are far more downsides to taking responsibility for a national testing program because if it fails, it's down to him—he couldn’t blame it on someone else.
But reopening for business isn't the only example of Trump fighting for something that makes no logical sense. Just look at latest battle to make China the scapegoat for the fact that COVID-19 is now ravaging our nation. Whatever China did or didn't do, Trump actually spent nearly three months—December through February—publicly praising China's transparency and efforts to fight the virus. In fact, Joe Biden's campaign has the receipts right here in this devastating campaign ad.
But outcomes don't matter to Trump. Although targeting China does absolutely nothing to reduce the impact of coronavirus here at home, Trump's still committed to it. He's "fighting." In fact, Trump’s latest pledge to suspend all immigration to the U.S. is the same exact gambit—he’s fighting for something that will prove absolutely useless to reducing the pain and tumult caused by the epidemic.
Want another example of fighting in spite of outcomes? Trump's efforts to get more antibody tests on the market regardless of whether they're actually effective at all. Doesn't make any sense, right? Flooding the market with a bunch of bogus tests would only sow chaos and perhaps even put people at risk by making them falsely believe they have immunity when they might not.
Still, that's exactly what Trump did, pushing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to vastly speed up approval of tests so they could quickly get to market even if they weren't properly vetted. In all, the FDA has allowed some 90 companies, many of them China-based, to market tests in the U.S. that haven't actually been vetted, according to The New York Times. And now that those tests are being sold in the U.S., the FDA is issuing warnings that some of those test companies are making “false claims about their products" and some tests have also been found to be "deeply flawed."
But Trump doesn't care about a bunch of bogus tests permeating the country. Last Friday, Trump applauded the FDA's rapid approval of antibody tests, promising they would show who "might have developed the wonderful, beautiful immunity” as America gets back to work. Alternatively, they could create false hope and kill people, but Trump isn’t fighting for outcomes. He’s fighting for reelection.