I’m not a politician. Frankly I lack the ambition, the desire to win above all else. I vividly remember the pressure on members of Congress in 2003 to authorize the Gulf War. I can’t read the hearts of all of them but I remember believing that many of them feared a vote against it would imperil their re-election. They didn’t vote their conscience, they voted their ambition.

I don’t respect that. Had I been a member of Congress I would have voted against this on the grounds that the Bush administration couldn’t convince me of their proof that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. History would have proven me right.

Fast forward to today. Whenever I speak to a Trump supporter (and I had this exact conversation a few months ago) they tell me they don’t care about his lies, or his tweets, or his xenophobia. In my last conversation with a coworker she said: “Have you looked at your 401(k)? How can you not support him?”

The last few months have been nothing but trouble for President Trump’s need to win a second term and crave the approval of the American people. Early on I think he recognized that COVID-19 would hurt the economy and therefore chances for a 2nd term. I’ve written about this before but he spent much of February and early March falsely claiming that the virus was mild and shouldn’t affect our behavior. He blamed the lack of preparedness of COVID-19 on President Obama.

Time and again we’ve seen him disregard science in his need for a positive narrative of his administration. Last month he suggested that we can use light and disinfectant to treat COVID-19.

Even President Trump recognizes that if the economy goes South he will have a hard time winning a second term. His only hope lies in the prayer that he will reopen the economy and the COVID-19 virus will magically go away. As I tell my patients, you can pray for a miracle but you can’t plan for one. If he’s wrong (and I pray he isn’t) the next several months will may well give us a horrific increase in COVIC-19 deaths and a cratering of the economy, making the Great Recession look small.

In fewer than six months Americans will go to the polls and decide if President Trump should serve another four years, or if Vice President Biden should replace him. I believe that President Trump knows that his re-election is in trouble. I believe he is desperate and the next six months will show how much damage he is willing to do to our nation and our world.

His call to roll back quarantines will cost lives and he knows it. And he doesn’t care. On November 3rd we can show how much we care.