Much respect for your perspectives, which are always worthy of consideration. This time, however, I must disagree.

Granted, Trump is evil, and he has some nonverbal talents that could be seen as a kind of intelligence. He has his own variety of charisma--one to which most thinking people are immune--and journeyman levels of showmanship.

And he's not as clueless as I'd been assuming, though it really doesn't take even average intelligence to grasp the concept of a deadly virus, especially if you have someone really smart explaining it to you in simple words and pictures.

But if he were as intelligent as you suggest, he would have spotted the corona virus as the gift that would give him the reelection. It was like a war, an opportunity for him to (for the first time ever) act like an actual leader. GWB enjoyed a level of approval he did nothing to earn, just because he was our leader when we were attacked. And if Trump had simply done what the experts prompted him to do, he would have regained the support of millions who were ready to give up on him.

But he's too stupid to think in any terms but how he looks at any given moment, and he was scared this would make him look bad, and he didn't understand that he couldn't make it go away by blustering and bluffing. So he threw away the lifeline fate had offered him.

One more point. Sabotaging the USPS would have been a pretty savvy move, if he had waited till October, when it was too late for anything to be done about it. But he pulled the trigger much too early, allowing time not only for the Dems to take countermeasures, but also for the impact of his action to be felt and publicized, upsetting vast numbers of older, rural voters.

And finally, if he were smart at all, even just a little bit, why the hell would he have opened up to Bob Woodward?