The never-ending attempts to minimize the coronavirus by comparing it to the flu drive me bananas.
This is picking nits, but I don't think he's willfully ignorant. I think he knows full well it's not at all comparable to the flu, and he's lying for political purposes. As far as I can tell, he figures that even if his actions cause the virus to spread, the death toll will not increase enough between now and election day to negate the boost he believes he will get from his "downplay the risk" (AKA flood the zone with sh*t) political strategy.
Here's an article from March:
>>>Trump told a White House press conference that "a lot of people" had previously suggested the country should simply let the coronavirus take its course, just like the seasonal flu. "Ride it out, don't do anything, just ride it out and think of it as the flu," they said, according to Trump, who said: "But it's not the flu. It is vicious." . . . "If we did nothing, if we just carried on with our life," he said, "you would have seen people dying on airplanes, you would have seen people dying in hotel lobbies. You would have seen death all over." <<<
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the risk from coronavirus is emphatically worse than regular flu, reversing his previous statements. Trump told a White House press conference that "a lot of people" had previously suggested the country should simply let the coronavirus take its course...
news.yahoo.com