For the record: The office of the president is vacant

This was written before Toddler Trump suggested we inject ourselves with bleach. And it's still accurate. It's Kevin Drum's summary of what he concluded from a month of Trump's raging press conferences:

Let’s review our president’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic:

• He has no plan for mass testing.

• He has already let everyone know he’s unenthusiastic about masks.

• He wants to “liberate” states from stay-at-home orders.

• He wants to open up non-essential businesses as soon as possible.

• He appears to have no particular opinion about social distancing, school closings, or large gatherings.

In other words, he literally has no concrete response to the pandemic at all, aside from closing our borders and passing along damaging fictions about vaccines and folk remedies. ...

David Von Drehle summarizes our plight:

We are launched on a great experiment. Can this union of states, this republic of shopkeepers, this democratic experiment, this mecca of individual initiative, meet this crisis as one people when our leader is out to lunch?

... The captain and his barmy crew have put us to sea in a lifeboat. We have no choice but to reach shore without them. Let’s keep paddling.

On our current trajectory, we're one of the largest and richest failed states in human history. Or not, if we decide we can do better starting in November.