CNN  — 

President Donald Trump has a track record of rewriting reality when it suits him.

He corrected a NOAA hurricane map with a Sharpie to bolster his own wrong claim about a storm track.

He routinely rejects US intelligence assessments when he dislikes them.

He doesn’t believe in climate change.

He’s pushed unproven and potentially dangerous treatments for Covid. He disagrees with Dr. Anthony Fauci and thinks “we’re in a good place” on coronavirus.

So it’s hardly a surprise that Trump, who insists that schools must reopen in the fall in order to put the economy back to normal, rejected the list of best practices for reopening developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Read here about his tweets today, and about the CDC’s response, which was to update the guidelines, as well as about the possibility that Trump could withhold funding from school districts and states that move more slowly than he wishes.

Related: Trump now in open dispute with health officials as virus rages

Trump’s newest allergy to professional opinion comes directly on the heels of him encouraging states to open up before meeting the CDC’s earlier guidelines.

They did, and now Covid is re-raging in the US. Will states again follow his lead and reopen schools before the virus is under control? Potentially of interest to parents: A summer camp in Arkansas closed down Wednesday after an outbreak of Covid among campers.

Related: Tulsa sees Covid-19 surge in the wake of Trump’s June rally

What’s most striking about Trump’s insistence that everything is fine, despite the resurgence of cases, is that it’s hitting states that voted for him.

Look at the chart below of Covid case spikes tracked against 2016 results:

trump states clinton states covid cases

It may be that the people getting sick are not the people in those states who are most likely to vote for Trump. But these are among the many states now reinstituting restrictions on their residents, because the disease is spiraling out of control. The US has now crossed 3 million infections.

Related: Florida’s governor took a victory lap on coronavirus – but it was only halftime