How the Electoral College made America's pandemic response worse

As the terrible human and economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic accelerates in the United States, the Trump administration seems bent on finding new ways to communicate its total indifference to widespread suffering. In a recent interview with Axios' Jonathan Swan, President Trump dismissed the country's nearly 160,000 COVID-19 deaths by saying, "It is what it is."

It wasn't a gaffe.

Last week, Vanity Fair published an infuriating insider account of the administration, and one of its many shocking and dispiriting revelations was that the president's wastrel son-in-law Jared Kushner and many other senior figures long viewed the coronavirus crisis as a "blue state" problem that consequently needed no robust federal response, planning, or investment.