Like every other petty con man, from back-alley hustlers to Wall Street fraudsters, Donald Trump is a thief and he’ll always be a thief. Now the president is clearly stealing from the George W. Bush playbook in one particularly awful way. Specifically, Trump appears to be desperately envious of Bush’s approval polls after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to the point of recently declaring himself to be a war president in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic. And it could absolutely get him re-elected.

As of the past several days, Trump’s been marketing COVID-19 as an “invisible enemy.” He can’t stop repeating the bellicose platitude that America is at war against the virus, even though he spent the first two months of this catastrophe telling us it was no big deal. 

Read the rest of Bob Cesca’s piece at Salon.