MISSION IMPROBABLE

Donald Trump desperately wants to reopen the nation to business. He acknowledges there will be additional deaths directly related to this reopening, but says Americans are up for the challenge.

"We have to get back to work!"

In a recent podcast, Chris Christie points out this is war, and Americans know how to sacrifice in wartime.

Okay, fine.

But I find it unseemly for an American president to exhort his people to "fight and die" in a war with an invisible enemy if he stands to benefit personally from those deaths.

Trump says he expects to win in a landslide in 2020, because—as he has often said—everybody loves Trump. Far as he knows, he did a terrific job battling the coronavirus, and now that the war is all but over, he plans to reap the reward.

But his re-election trump card has always been the booming economy he's willing to take full credit for creating. (I'm pretty sure it would not go over very well with him to point out the economy was moving in that direction like a runaway freight train by the end of the Obama presidency.)

Realistically, after botching the covid-19 response so badly, Trump needs that wonderful economy to be on the rebound—big time—by November 3rd. And that can't happen unless folks crawl out of their holes and start to buy stuff at an unprecedented rate.

Trump needs a blindingly fast reopening and no second wave of the virus. And since he has no control of the second element, he has to push the first.

And maybe it is good for the country, despite an increase in deaths. Maybe it is worth it for folks to make that sacrifice.

But Donald Trump needs to take his personal payday off the table. He needs to make the so-called Shermanesque Statement.

Lyndon Johnson did it on March 31, 1968: "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."

Mike Pence should make a similar statement.

In fact, I'd like to see the entire Republican party excuse itself from the 2020 presidential election. Think of it as atonement for the acquittal hoax.

Let Democrat Biden battle it out with Independent Sanders.

Yeah, right. Look, I'm not holding my breath waiting for Trump or any Republican to do the right thing.

The reopening of America will probably fizzle. The vast majority of folks don't want to risk infecting their children or losing whatever parent or grandparent they're still holding onto.

And Trump can't send troops into houses to drag reluctant citizens out and plop their butts down in a movie theater to see Mission Impossible 99: Bite the Big One.

Until there's a working vaccine—or herd immunity—nobody's going back to business as usual any time soon.