Not that we didn’t know already, but the crisis, as crises tend to do, tells us a lot about the real DJT, and it’s not a flattering picture. Zero consideration for anyone/anything, vainglorious, petty, vindictive, shallow, scatterbrained…he wants untold numbers of people to die for vanity in a self-declared war where he reigns as general in chief (though as Jeet Heer describes, not Grant, Pershing, or Eisenhower, but Custer, Haig, Westmoreland).

Oh, also keeping with his true self, there’s the nepotism…and the grifting.

The fumbling search for new supplies — heralded by Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner as a way to pipe private-sector hustle and accountability into the hidebound federal bureaucracy — became a case study of Mr. Trump’s style of governing, in which personal relationships and loyalty are often prized over governmental expertise, and private interests are granted extraordinary access and deference.

…

At least one tip the volunteers forwarded turned into an expensive debacle. In late March, according to emails obtained by The Times, two of the volunteers passed along procurement forms submitted by Yaron Oren-Pines, a Silicon Valley engineer who said he could provide more than 1,000 ventilators.

Mr. Kushner’s volunteers passed the tip to federal officials who then sent it to senior officials in New York, who assumed Mr. Oren-Pines had been vetted and awarded him an eye-popping $69 million contract. Not a single ventilator was delivered, and New York is now seeking to recover the money.