I think this is a bit of a straw man. Yes, people sometimes do things that aren't in their rational self-interest, even capaciously understood. But we are talki

I think this is a bit of a straw man. Yes, people sometimes do things that aren't in their rational self-interest, even capaciously understood. But we are talking about a specific scenario. The question is: would the President, told of an imminent asteroid collision large enough to destroy human civilization, and knowing this information would leak if she did not announce it, elect to hide this information for a month until after the midterms for no particular reason? You say "They thought the plan to break it up and mine it would work." At the time of the decision of whether to announce the existence of the asteroid, and create a plan, there obviously was no plan. So no, she didn't think that. >"Likewise with trump, who had worked to dismantle the existing pandemic playbook[0] took for granted how well our medical response would be. He regularly disregarded expert opinions, or simply did not speak with them[1]. He even worked to make it difficult for states to get help, because he lost the vote there[2]." Again, this isn't the point. Even Trump never tried to deny the existence of COVID. Clearly that would not have worked and would have exploded in his face.