This Is How Donald Trump Will Be Remembered

None of the crises surrounding President Donald Trump over the past three years has been as calamitous as the one he now faces. Impeachment was largely a political problem with a predictable end; the government shutdown wasn’t going to last indefinitely. But the coronavirus is something else entirely: a mortal siege. It could sink the economy and, under certain horrid scenarios, kill as many as 2 million Americans. It’s already made the country Trump leads in some ways unrecognizable.

A threat so grave handed Trump a history-making opportunity that eluded many of his predecessors. He’d become a wartime president, with a chance to refashion his legacy. That moment has come and is likely gone. For weeks, he downplayed the danger. He denied responsibility for that are crucial to tracking the virus’s spread. Only in recent days did his administration begin exhorting Americans to avoid restaurants and stay home from school, steps that state and local officials have already been putting