Putin told Trump that Covid was just like the flu.

Trump didn’t “know” the truth about Covid. Trump doesn’t “know” anything, it’s all about “they say” with him.
 

Here’s what I think happened. We know from insider gossip that Trump just says what the last person told him. Trump talked to Xi, who told him stuff. Trump told Woodward what  Xi said to him. A little while later, Trump talked to Putin. Putin told him something else, and told him to say that from now on. So, of course, that’s what Trump did. 
 

Why would Putin “advise” Trump to say Covid was just like the flu and was going to magically go away on its own? The question answers itself. Putin’s big strategic goal is to weaken the US. Putin put Trump in power specifically to get him do stuff like this.  Atomic weapons have made war between superpowers obsolete, but this kind of fuckery does harm to the enemy without war-like consequences to the aggressor. 
 

I hope Putin suffers some kind of blowback down the line, maybe directly from helping sustain an uncontrolled pandemic in the Western Hemisphere, maybe from the economic dominoes falling from a resultant depression. 
 

We’ll see, or some of us will.