“Now he is going to be an ‘expert’: he’s had it so nobody can tell him anything. If he ever even paused for a second for any medical advice before, that’s over. He knows more about wars than the generals; he will now know more about the coronavirus than any doctors. All the people that he’s exposing by this, the poor Secret Service, the medical personnel, the pilots on the helicopter, all the White House staff. It’s mind-boggling.”
—Writer Gwenda Blair, on Trump’s defiance of medical advice and his flouting of safeguards.
“What’s so shocking to me is that not only are the signals that Donald Trump is sending by removing a mask and not engaging in social distancing clearly bad for public health, sending a terrible example to people, but it’s also bad politics. I would chalk it up to the medication that he was given – except this is the way he has been behaving since he descended from the escalator in 2015. This is just who he is.”
—Zac Petkanas, of the health pressure group Protect Our Care.
“If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at. We’re really at a very low level but some of the states — they were blue states, and blue-state management.”
—Donald Trump, on Sept. 16, claiming (erroneously, as usual) that the highest coronavirus infection rates were in states run by Democrats. [So, how many Democrats were at that Rose Garden event? How many White House staffers are Democrats?]
“We’ve all known people who lie, exaggerate, engage in magical thinking, delude themselves, and even, in extreme cases, construct their own private reality. Psychiatrists see them often. What remains inexplicable is how such a person was able to bring along 40 percent of a great nation.”
—Tweet by Mona Charen
“We are witnessing a death match between Selfishness and Stupidity.”
—Tweet by Dan Rather
“Donald Trump could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and infect … everyone and not lose any supporters. except for the ones who die.”
—Tweet by Jeff Tiedrich
Louisiana Voice 
We are now in the hands of not just a madman, but a madman literally on steroids – and his support holds steady at about 43%. This truly is Bizzaroland.
Unrelated question: For about the 50th time, why can’t the moderators on these “debates” simply cut the mic when the participant runs over on time? Casper the Unfriendly V. P. was the main abuser last night and, of course, ole Covid45 broke not just that rule, but all the others in his latest bloviation disguised as debate participation. These people supposedly sign some kind of agreement to abide by the debate rules then ignore them. Seems to me, if I signed a document that said I agreed to have my mic cut off if I exceeded my time, I would have no complaint when it was.
“All men are, at times, influenced by inexplicable sentiments. Ideas haunt them in spite of all their efforts to discard them. Prepossessions [Preconceptions] are entertained, for which their reason is unable to discover any adequate cause. The strength of a belief, when it is destitute of any rational foundation, seems, of itself, to furnish a new ground for credulity. We first admit a powerful persuasion, and then, from reflecting on the insufficiency of the ground on which it is built, instead of being prompted to dismiss it, we become more forcibly attached to it.” Charles Brockden Brown – American Novelist (1771-1810)
How could he have known about these Trump Supporters that far back?