Trump’s coronavirus tantrums have achieved what we all thought was impossible – sunk him to new, reprehensible lows

However far he falls, there is no sea bed to his venality. When he isn’t honouring a female governor as ‘that woman’, he’s calling himself a ‘ratings hit’, writes Matthew Norman

Watching Trump falls between ‘a distasteful fetish and an ice bath’ (EPA)

He said it was all a huge hoax, and a month later he said he felt it would be a pandemic long before the WHO designated it as such.

He said he was doing “an extraordinary job” when the US infection figure stood at 15, and that, within days, that number would be at or near zero.

Now, in as sweeping a case of political expectation-lowering as may ever be encountered, he says it will be a personal triumph if 100,000 die.

He said he was going to put the US back to work by Easter without a care for the casualties. Now he’s seen the polling about that masterplan, he says it’s 30 April, or early June, or whenevs.

In his eagerness to keep the fleeing sick out of his beloved Florida, he said he was poised to quarantine New York and New Jersey. Within hours, he said he wouldn’t.

You can’t put a price on strong leadership and consistent messaging in a time of crisis. So no wonder Donald Trump is “a ratings hit”, as he sensitively put it, for his televised press conferences.

God knows how anyone with their lives in his dainty little mitts feels about the daily amalgam of braggadocio, proud ignorance, self-adulation, unsheathed spite and meandering reflections on such urgently topical matters as US shipbuilding capacity in the Second World War. (The ultra-high whopper quotient may be taken as read).

But observing the vaudeville act from the safe remove of Britain, the experience falls somewhere between a distasteful fetish and an ice bath. It makes you feel grubby, yet also more alive.

The 38 months of unremitting mayhem since his inauguration haven’t inured us to the shock after all, or even dulled the pain receptors. If no effective vaccine has still been found against the head-shaking, mouth-gaping, eye-rolling incredulity he invokes – none ever will.

However low he dives, there is no sea bed to his venality. When he isn’t honouring a female governor as “that woman”, he is falsely claiming Nancy Pelosi delayed the economic rescue package; and chivalrously describing the speaker of the house, and third in the presidential line of succession, as “a sick puppy”.

That entitled toddler’s brittleness has him throwing tantrums at reporters. One called him out for questioning whether certain virus-related gubernatorial requests were really necessary – for trivial stuff, admittedly, like life-saving equipment. He told her: “Don’t be threatening.”

When another asked how he wished to reassure a fearful public, he hissed: “Don’t be a cutie-pie.”

In his studiedly Lincolnesque argot, meanwhile, San Francisco is “a slum”. As for his native New York, he pretty much admits he is denying it ventilators because Andrew Cuomo, its governor, ain’t paying him enough respec’.

Malcontent with that self-penned confession to attempted manslaughter, he sourced the NYC hospitals’ colossal requisitions for face masks to nursing staff walking them out the back door, and flogging them on the black market.

As ever with his most doolally accusations, that is transparent projection. Such a scam at such a moment could only occur to someone to whom it is a perfectly natural business proposition. Someone like president Donald J Soprano.

While he rants and waffles and menaces and drivels like King Lear during a stroke, governor Cuomo uses his news conferences to inform, reassure and educate the petrified masses in and beyond New York.

So impressive is he, and so desperate is America for a saviour, that Cuomo is suddenly third favourite to become the next president. A non-runner for the Democratic nomination, he is more fancied to win that race than Bernie Sanders,

This seems to be purest fantasy. Assuming the presumptive nominee doesn’t interpret his failure to make much impression on virus-stricken America as a reason to withdraw, Joe Biden will be the candidate.

But the abrasive Cuomo, who resembles a standard-issue grizzled detective sergeant in a second-rate 1980s NYPD cop show, is the Rudy Giuliani of 9-11.

What works in the eye of a devastating storm doesn’t always wear too well once the winds subside. You needn’t be an obsessive student of Giuliani’s post-mayoral career to appreciate that.

But right now, with Biden self-isolating at home in keeping with his age, and Trump sadly declining to do the same in keeping with his, Cuomo is the closest thing to a proper president America has.

Writing in the New York Times, Alastair Campbell cites his frankness, authority, empathy and ability to inspire as a teaching guide for Boris Johnson.

That is an enticing thought, but far too utopian. No one changes. To rise to an event as demanding as this, there must be some latent capacity for the qualities required.

There isn’t the slightest evidence that they exist in Johnson. If they did, the virus would have been the catalyst to bring them out of dormancy.

Yet the worst to be said of him is that he has plateaued these recent weeks, maintaining the mix of complacency, indecision, cultivated buffoonery, poorly simulated gravitas and feckless incompetence that defined him before.

This gives him the clear edge over the man who effectively told the people of New York, and other eastern states, that they will die in punishment for their governors’ lack of respect.

Once again, Trump has done the impossible. From the lowest imaginable base, he has sunk to the occasion.