Last night Donald Trump tried to convince a primetime audience his administration has things well in hand with regard to the COVID-19 virus. It was an unprecedented speech from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

He said that for “the vast majority of Americans, the risk is very, very low,” and that we should put partisanship behind us as we struggle to overcome a “foreign” virus.

Immediately after his speech the NBA canceled the rest of its season after a player tested positive for the virus. The NCAA is limiting March Madness to “essential staff and limited family”—no fans allowed. And Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson both tested positive while on vacation in Australia.

But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is Donald Trump lacks credibility. He has called the Democrats’ response to the coronavirus “their new hoax” and has spewed divisive bile that, arguably, is nearly as toxic as the virus itself.

And then there’s the task force.

Vice President Mike Pence opens and closes each briefing he’s conducted with the task force during the last two weeks with the same sentence.

“For the average American, the risk remains low,” he tells us in a flat monotone reminiscent of a drooling, slacked-jawed mental patient juiced with Thorazine and shuffling through a psych ward as nurse Ratched hovers nearby.

Does Pence mean the average American (whatever “average” means) is at low risk from dying of the coronavirus? Does he mean the average American has a low risk of catching it? He never says.

If it’s the former, then worldwide statistics would back that claim. The mortality rate is hovering around three percent, and while that makes the novel coronavirus drastically more deadly than seasonal flu, it also means that 97 percent of the people who get it will survive.

If it’s the latter, then Pence is talking out of his ass. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told me on Monday during a task force briefing they had no idea how many people had been tested in the United States. Tuesday, before a congressional subcommittee, director Robert R. Redfield testified that fewer than 5,000 people nationwide had been tested by the CDC.

Afterward a senior administration official confided to me, “It’s amazing the lack of coordination around here. You simply cannot determine the risk of getting the virus if you cannot adequately test to see who has the virus.”

At Monday’s briefing, Trump showed up for two minutes, made a statement about cutting payroll taxes and bolted. Earlier I’d asked him if he’d been tested for COVID-19 based on his potential exposure at CPAC, his lethargic demeanor in the last few weeks since his return from India and the fact that he hadn’t finished his annual physical, which he claimed he began in November when he took an unexpected trip to Walter Reed.

But between the time I’d asked on the South Lawn, when Trump did nothing more than wave at me, and the press briefing at 6:30 p.m., it was disclosed that Congressman Matt Gaetz had been directly exposed to the virus at CPAC. Gaetz made news earlier this week when he mocked concerned citizens by taking a photo with an aide while wearing a gas mask. He was onboard Air Force One when he learned of his exposure at CPAC.

At the briefing Trump again tried to walk away. Still I asked the question. He frowned and kept marching. The vice president then took over the podium. I asked him. For the briefest of moments, Pence looked like an evangelical caught at a death metal concert. John Roberts from Fox explained to the vice president why we wanted the info. Pence was apparently unaware the president had potentially been exposed. He told us he himself had not been tested and promised he’d find out about the president. A later statement by his press secretary disclosed Trump had not been tested either.

But if the risk is low, then how do you explain Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York? He declared New Rochelle (a bedroom community outside New York City famous for being the fictional home of Rob and Laura Petrie of The Dick Van Dyke Show) a “containment area.”

A large cluster of coronavirus cases in the area prompted Cuomo to deploy the National Guard.

In Ohio, the University of Dayton closed its classes—prompting a riot. Google has asked all employees in its North American offices to work from home if they can. Countless other companies are doing the same. Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden canceled rallies. (The president started canceling events yesterday.) In Washington State, gatherings of more than 250 people are banned in three counties. Worldwide, the country of Italy is locked down and Berlin has shuttered state theaters, opera houses and concert halls until mid-April.

And while Pence says the risk remains low, the president says the media and Democrats are trying to hype the coronavirus to tank the stock market and ruin his chances of re-election.

Over the weekend, Trump tweeted: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus. We moved VERY early to close borders to certain areas, which was a Godsend. V.P. is doing a great job. The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to make us look bad. Sad!”

The task force, reacting to pressure to get people tested, claims millions of tests are becoming available. But critics ranging from governors to state representatives to swaths of the electorate claim the federal government has been slow to supply them. When CNN’s Jim Acosta pressed Pence on the availability of tests, Pence couldn’t answer a direct question with a direct answer. Later we found out those “millions” of tests may still be two weeks away.

No one has addressed why the U.S. didn’t adopt the World Health Organization’s coronavirus test. Developing our own has cost us weeks in determining who has the virus—during which time it has likely spread. South Korea, Germany, Italy and, as of Wednesday, the state of Colorado (with others just beginning to catch on), literally have drive-through testing now available for its citizens—as in you can drive through a testing site, get swabbed and find out fairly quickly if you’re infected without getting out of your car. But most of the United States, formerly the most advanced and powerful nation on the planet, remains largely in the Middle Ages when it comes to testing its citizens for the virus.

Cue Kellyanne Conway and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, who showed up recently in the briefing room to downplay the threat of the virus. Both told us COVID-19 was “contained” or “virtually contained” and Conway lashed out at Paula Reid from CBS when Reid mentioned the virus was spreading. “Are you a doctor?” Conway asked her. A few seconds later, Conway admitted the virus was spreading—after first saying it had not. Then she went after me when I asked her about testing. “Don’t get snarky,” I told her. “I’m just asking questions.”

That’s what bothers the administration the most: the obvious questions. How many in the country have been tested? When can someone walk into a clinic and get a swab test as they can for the flu? Why did we refuse to use the WHO test other countries are using? Why are we so far behind? What’s the real number of infections?

It is no surprise Trump fears an economic downturn and has been trying to manipulate the media and the markets to mitigate the conflagration. The task force, when it manages common-sense approaches to dealing with the virus, often runs contrary to the president’s actions. Those mixed messages coming from the administration are only serving to further erode faith in the task force and the presidency.

Finally there is the matter of the homeless and uninsured. At the end of the briefing on Friday, after saying insurance would cover any testing, I asked the vice president to address the situation of the uninsured. He and his entire task force walked off the stage in lockstep.

“Gentlemen. Ladies. Can the uninsured get tested?” I asked.

They kept walking and Katie Miller, the vice president’s press secretary, turned and said, “Screaming for the camera isn’t going to get you anywhere.”

“How about answering the question?” I asked.

Steve Portnoy from CBS radio said, “We’d like an answer to the question.”

“It’s a valid question,” I returned.

No answer.

John Oliver used the clip on Last Week Tonight. “Yeah. It is a valid question,” he said. “He’s asking if nearly 30 million uninsured Americans will have access to a test for a deadly contagious virus. That is relevant. If he were shouting something pointless out, like ‘Excuse me, Mr. Vice President, what’s the difference between bisque and chowder,’ or if chipmunks are just baby squirrels…”

Either way, the lack of candor and inability to effectively deal with the problem has even some of the president’s adherents questioning his leadership ability. The callous nature of the administration’s response has many scared.

Monday I got an e-mail from a Trump supporter who routinely sends me insulting messages and has often vilified me and other reporters for questions we’ve asked at the White House. “I still think the lame-stream media is out to get our president. But thank you for asking about uninsured Americans getting tested for the coronavirus. I’ve been out of work and I’m uninsured. And I’m worried. I know this isn’t a hoax.”

According to several Trump loyalists, despite what he says publicly, the president himself is “scared shitless” of getting the virus. “You can’t stop this virus,” said one administration official—who is also not a doctor.

Wednesday Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addressed a congressional subcommittee. “If we are complacent and don’t do really aggressive containment and mitigation,” he said, “the number could go way up…many, many millions.”

At the end of the original 1953 film adaptation of The War of the Worlds the narrator says this: “After all that men could do had failed, the Martians were destroyed and humanity was saved by the littlest things, which God, in His wisdom, had put upon this Earth.”

The “littlest things,” of course, are the germs that cause the common cold.

At the end of the inferior Tom Cruise reboot, the narrator tells us, “They were undone, destroyed, after all of man’s weapons and devices had failed, by the tiniest creatures that God in his wisdom put upon this earth. By the toll of a billion deaths, man had earned his immunity, his right to survive among this planet’s infinite organisms. And that right is ours against all challenges. For neither do men live nor die in vain.”

You could say that Trump and the invading Martians have a few things in common. Even his supporters are hoping the toll won’t rise as high before we earthlings stop him—or a virus to which no one is immune.