The epitaph for Donald Trump’s political career will be something he said in the Rose Garden last week: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

He then tried to blame former president Barack Obama for the lack of coronavirus testing by the U.S. government.

Years from now we will still be dissecting the desiccated corpse of the Trump administration, and future historians will focus on this moment: Facing a worldwide pandemic, because of a lack of adequate testing and a shortage of crucial medical equipment, the president and his administration created conditions that constitute criminal neglect.

Trump ignored the warning signs and strong-armed scientists into following his lead. He continues to bungle any attempt to mitigate the spread of the virus in the United States.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, perhaps the most distinguished infectious-disease doctor in the U.S. and part of the president’s coronavirus task force, told Congress last week that the American testing system failed us. “The idea of anybody getting [tested] easily the way people in other countries are doing it? We’re not set up for that,” he said. “Do I think we should be? Yes, but we’re not.”

South Korea is testing some 10,000 people a day. We have managed to test slightly more than that—in three months. Almost every country on the planet is months ahead of us in determining the spread of the virus.

In the beginning the president didn’t want to talk about the disease; when he did, he tried to artificially deflate the number of those infected. From the briefing room he told us, “I like the numbers being where they are,” when asked about a cruise ship full of Americans who at first were unable to dock in California. “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”

The administration’s crime is callous, brazen and overwhelmingly stupid. It is an affront to the dignity of every American. In an effort to downplay the severity of the infection and stave off a financial crisis, the president has created economic havoc and put the lives of more than 300 million Americans in needless peril.

Government, at its most basic, is there to enhance the general welfare of its people. It is why we spend so much money on the military. It is the rationale Trump gives for wanting to build a wall. Government should also protect us from life-threatening illnesses. We have the technology, and when it’s properly applied, as it was during the Ebola outbreak in Africa, we can and do make a difference.

Trump previously cut his pandemic team. He’s cut money to science. He has denigrated Democrats’ response to his actions as “their new hoax.” In so doing, he shows himself to be the small, insecure man his opponents have said he is all along.

But none of it, according to the man himself, is Trump’s fault.

On Tuesday Trump appeared in the briefing room and told the world that no one is handling the COVID-19 threat as well as he is—and while he was appealing for a bipartisan “all together now” policy regarding the war against the coronavirus, he also said he would continue to express his partisan leanings and punch back at those who criticize him.

That, of course, is the opposite of leadership. But Trump has never been one to lead or take the high road. He also fails to see how contradictory statements make the markets jittery and scare people who wonder if the worst is yet to come.

Trump’s response to the coronavirus is another indictment of his failed presidency, after the Mueller report and the Ukraine “perfect call.” This time, however, it isn’t politics. It’s science and math—not the Donald’s best subjects—and for the first time he really can’t hide.

Back in the third week of January Trump said, “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”

The vice president, who believes in science as much as most folks believe in the Easter Bunny, fell right in line. “The risk for the average American remains low,” Mike Pence exclaimed early and often. Others in the task force said similar things, but you had to listen to the nuance to understand the meaning. Dr. Fauci told us the risk was low—as of that day. Fauci knew what was coming and tried, as much as he could, to both placate the president and inform the public.

The president persisted. “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China,” he told us on January 31. By the end of February he told me, answering a question in the briefing room, “One day, it’s like a miracle. It will disappear.”

At the beginning of March, according to the World Health Organization, the U.S. had just 75 cases of the coronavirus within its borders. The president assured us it was contained. Both White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway continued to make that pitch even as the numbers rose. By March 17 there were nearly 6,500 cases in the U. S., with 115 deaths.

These are staggering increases in a short time, but we do not yet know how many people have the virus and what the true mortality rate is because the government has completely screwed up the testing process. This was avoidable. The World Health Organization had testing kits available, but the U.S. didn’t use them.

The reason, according to Dr. Debbie Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, is that the U.S. was focused on “quality.” While the rest of the world was using the WHO’s existing test, she said tests used in other countries resulted in “false positives” and “false negatives.”

Dr. Joseph Fair, an MSNBC science contributor, accused the administration of lying about that. “The reason the WHO didn’t offer us the test is because they only offer them for free to impoverished nations,” he explained. “We have to buy them. And the tests that were out, that were inaccurate and [showed] false positives and false negatives, as Dr. Birx mentioned, were actually the CDC tests, not the commercial tests. So that’s the opposite of actually what happened.”

Meanwhile, the tests that are available appear to be going to those who have means rather than those who have dire need. Wednesday morning Peter Alexander from NBC asked Trump if the richest Americans were getting preferential treatment in testing for the coronavirus. Trump acknowledged that was indeed a possibility.

“That’s the story of life,” he said nonchalantly.

People are hoarding toilet paper, they are scared and they can watch the president as he preaches one thing yet practices another. While he says we’re all in it together, he also says, in effect, some are going to get better treatment because they have more money.

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” Orwell wrote in Animal Farm.

Trump is displaying a criminal and deadly lack of leadership while his administration continues to lie to us and confuse us about the number of people who have been tested, where the tests are and when they can be administered. With few testing kits available, the health care industry has to prioritize who is tested, potentially allowing those who are sick to infect others until their symptoms are blatant enough to warrant a test—unless they’re rich and famous. Then they go to the front of the line.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said Tuesday the United States might have to prepare for a 20 percent unemployment rate. That’s the opposite of reassuring; that’s an economic debacle that could forever change the face of the country. On Wednesday Trump pooh-poohed that sentiment as the “absolute, total worst-case scenario” and again plugged the economy he said he built even as the market continued to crash. He continues to rate himself a “10” in how he has handled the pandemic, even as he claims no responsibility for the lack of testing.

He not only speaks from both sides of his mouth; he also can pipe in with a chorus from his posterior. “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine-tuned plan at the White House for our attack on coronavirus,” he tweeted on March 8.

The very next day he said, “This blindsided the world.”

The bottom line of course is that you can’t take the president or the administration seriously about anything it does regarding the virus. It appears to be all for show. All hat and no cattle, as they say in Texas.

The White House press corps has thinned its ranks, allowing no more than two dozen reporters and a handful of technicians in the room for the briefings at any one time. The reporters populate every other seat. Meanwhile Trump and his task force, who have preached the need for social distancing, crowd 10 people so close together on stage they are literally breathing each other’s fumes. It’s a theater of the absurd where few real questions are asked and few real answers are provided in a half-empty room occupied by people with half-empty heads.

Wednesday morning it was more of the same. Trump, Pence and the task force were standing side by side, and Trump told us again how we were “blindsided” by the “Chinese virus.” When asked about millennials ignoring the advice of the task force, Trump said it would be wise to “heed the advice” the task force is promoting, especially in regard to “social distancing.”

Fundamentally, this shows exactly why Trump fails. Do what he says, not what he does. There are rules for him and rules for everyone else.

No one is buying it. And the press is floundering at half strength in the briefing room.

And Trump still doesn’t have a grasp on the desperation and despair of the American people—even as his beloved stock market plunges to levels lower than when he came into office.

What Trump doesn’t grasp is that the United States has fundamentally changed. He’s behind the eight ball and he’s not coming back.