Voters are getting exactly the picture they should on the eve of Election Day: President Donald Trump in denial of an ongoing pandemic and actively participating in its spread.

At rallies over the weekend, Trump repeated what has become his new favorite line: that the U.S. is rounding the corner on the coronavirus outbreak. He attacked doctors , allegedly for inflating COVID-19 numbers in order to make money, and Democratic governors , for supposedly overreacting to the threat.

He even hinted he might fire Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who since the start of the pandemic has arguably been the most consistent, reliable voice of reason at the national level.

Meanwhile, as of Sunday, reported cases were up 43% from two weeks ago and deaths were up 15%, as part of a third coronavirus surge that public health experts long predicted. Trumps rallies, which pack thousands onto buses and into airplane hangars with sometimes poor ventilation, are likely playing some small part in this. As many as 30,000 cases and 700 deaths trace back to his rallies, according to one modeling exercise from some Stanford University economists.

The surge is hitting hardest in the upper Great Plains and Midwest, including the Dakotas and Iowa, where three very Trumpy Republican governors have been refusing to mandate mask-wearing and, in the case of South Dakota GOP Gov. Kristi Noem, bragging about it .

The U.S. is not alone in struggling with a new surge: France, Italy and even Germany are facing big increases. But the U.S. is the only one of those countries with a leader pretending things are getting better.

More than 230,000 Americans have already died from COVID-19, a number Trump himself once suggested would be a worst-case scenario. At this rate, nobody would be surprised if the number hits 300,000 or even 400,000 before the pandemic is over.

Trumps determination to deny this reality, rather than react to it, has a lot to do with his personal traits his habit of surrounding himself with charlatans, his refusal to study problems in detail, and his apparent inability to summon the basic level of empathy we associate with most members of the human species.

But Trumps behavior alone doesnt explain why the U.S. pandemic response looks like it does. Right-wing thought and its grip on the Republican Party have also played a role by denigrating experts, undermining the public sector and preaching a libertarian ethos that says we cant or shouldnt bother responding collectively to big problems.

A Trumpy Approach To The Virus

It is not surprising that a president who seeks economic advice from Lawrence Kudlow , whose record includes predicting Bill Clintons tax hikes would kill the 1990s economy and that the 2007 housing bubble was a mirage, is taking cues on the pandemic from Scott Atlas, a politically conservative radiologist without special expertise in public health or epidemiology.

Nor is it surprising that a president who has suggested energy-efficient light bulbs cause cancer and once confused HIV and HPV would hype unproven (and later deemed to be too risky ) COVID-19 treatments and speculate that injecting bleach might be an effective way to treat patients.