So, what is it that Trump should have done differently?

[TaraJo]

Honestly, from day one, Trump really has resisted any kind of lock down.  He's so worried about the stock market and he's listening more to marketing majors than STEM majors that he's going to mess this up, big time.  We're flattening the curve, in spite of his MANY missteps, but if you take your foot off the gas pedal now, things are just going to spike back up again.  

And I think that's been kinda the problem with republican ideology in general over the past 20-30 years: it's been extremely hostile to evidence based science, intellectualism and academia.  They listen to slick business majors left and right, but once a science major comes up and tells them that 2+2=4, they throw a fit and spend the next 5 years fighting to get the government to back them up.  And when you have a real, immediate problem that's based on real science, believing 2+2=5 will get millions killed.  

Until Trump came along, even though the republican base has always thought like this, their elected officials were at least smart enough not to act on it.  Trump changed that.  He is the republican id.  Sure, he has campaign people and public relations people trying to keep him in check and the republican media is working overtime to spin his antics into something reasonable, but when you still boil it all down, you still have the worst extremes of the republican party, doing whatever the hell they want and nobody is holding them back.  

I have a bad feeling that the recovery from the coronavirus is going to be a HUGE clusterfuck, especially in red states where the elected officials are all big Trump fans.  I know here, in Oklahoma, just before before everything was shut down our governor got dragged for proudly tweeting about being in a crowded restaurant with his family.  I'd be willing to bet other states have similar stories about their elected officials.  And all those red states, the ones we already know are going to vote for Trump in the 2020 election, I have a bad feeling that their recovery and reopening is going to be a huge clusterfuck that are going to have much higher death tolls than they should.  We already have riots in Michigan and other states of people demanding we open everything back up and I have to wonder, how many infections and deaths could be avoided if those people would just stay home?

I would hope that this will be what convinces the public to stop supporting republicans and realize that the republican philosophy doesn't look out for them, but the democrats are painfully bad at marketing themselves and don't know how to spread a message that resounds with people.