Magical Thinking: As Americans have trouble sleeping with pandemic worries, President Trump yesterday turned over the microphone at his daily briefing to Michael Lindell, founder of Minnesota-based My Pillow, who appears on cable television along with the Flex Seal guy.

  Lindell, a member of Trump’s Mar a Lago Club who has called Trump “the greatest president in history,” said that before Trump’s election the nation “had turned its back on God,” and he urged Americans to read Bibles during their extended time at home.

  Is the Bible streaming on Netflix now?

  As governors and hospital administrators continue to call for medical supplies and ventilators, Trump said the country will soon have a surplus of ventilators that can be sent to help other countries. Claiming that as several companies produce 50,000 ventilators in 100 days, Trump said, “As we outpace what we need, we’re going to be sending them to Italy, we’re going to be sending them to France, we’re going to be sending them to Spain, where they have tremendous problems, and other countries as we can.”

  The states are still reporting a shortage of virus tests. Gov. Steven Bullock of Montana told Trump on a conference call that, “Literally we are one day away if we don’t get test kits from the CDC that we won’t be able to do testing in Montana.”

  Ignoring what the governor just said, Trump replied, “We’ve tested more than any nation in the world … I haven’t heard about testing being a problem.”

  While there’s still no proven cure for the coronavirus, the Food and Drug Administration over the weekend granted emergency use of two long-used malaria drugs to treat patients hospitalized with coronavirus, despite a lack of evidence that they would be effective against the virus.

The Numbers Game: This morning, the US has had 3,710 coronavirus deaths, 914 of them in New York City. In all of New York State 67,000 cases have been identified and 1,342 have died.

  So far, across the country 164,610 people have been diagnosed, but anecdotally it seems to be more than that. People report being unable to get a test for obvious symptoms, or never getting back their results.

  The crisis is also heating up in New Orleans, where there have been 86 deaths, and in Detroit, where 59 people have died since the city’s first fatality 11 days ago.

Nasty Question: The President is increasingly agitated during his briefings when reporters hold him to the record of what he previously said about the coronavirus and government actions.

  Yesterday CNN’s Jim Acosta read Trump a series of his own quotes, among them, “We have it very much under control in this country. The Coronavirus is very much under control, in the USA. It’s going to disappear. It’s like a miracle. It will disappear. March 4th, we have a very small number of people in this country infected.”

  The list went on, but you get the idea. Trump responded, “I’m very proud. It’s almost a miracle. And it is, the way it’s all come together. And instead of asking a nasty, snarky question like that, you should ask a real question. And other than that, I’m going to go to somebody else.”

Pink Slips: The Macy’s department store chain, which also owns Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury, said yesterday that it had lost “the majority” of its sales because of store closures and that they are furloughing most of their 125,000 employees, keeping only skeleton crews. 

  L Brands, which owns Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works, said it would let go most store staff and “those who are not currently working.”

  While there’s plenty of news to report these days, it’s tough to pay for good reporting  without advertising, and advertising has dried up. Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain, says it is laying off some employees and cutting the pay of remaining staff. 

Also Happening: The Democratic presidential campaign is practicing social distancing, but Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has almost no chance of taking the nomination, has failed to get out of the race. He has moved his campaign online and says he wants to debate Joe Biden in April. 

Today in Celebrity Coronavirus: Opera singer Placido Domingo, country singer John Prine, Prince Albert, actor Idris Elba, comedian Andy Cohen.  

The Party Line: even in the worst of times, loyal Republicans are sticking with President Trump while the virus spreads out of control and Trump fiddles.

  Not so with Peter Wehner, a lifelong Republican, who writes for The Atlantic that, “Trump is such a habitual liar that he is incapable of being honest, even when being honest would serve his interests.” Wehner says, “The president’s disordered personality makes him as ill-equipped to deal with a crisis as any president has ever been. With few exceptions, what Trump has said is not just useless; it is downright injurious.”

  Wehner concludes that, “It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the con man behind the curtain. The president, enraged for having been unmasked, will become more desperate, more embittered, more unhinged. He knows nothing will be the same. His administration may stagger on, but it will be only a hollow shell. The Trump presidency is over.”