WASHINGTON They wanted Donald Trump to come to Washington to break things. Turn over tables. Shake up the system.

To his most avid supporters, the president has done all these things, and theyre not about to let his handling of the coronavirus and potentially the thousands of extra deaths it could cause change their minds.

It sounds callous, but maybe thats population control, said Linda Moreno, 66, pointing out that the disease is most deadly to the elderly, such as herself.

She and her husband, a Vietnam War veteran, are retired and travel the country in their RV, hitting as many Trump rallies as they can. They attended the July 4 event Trump staged on the National Mall last year, a rally in Minneapolis in October and one in Phoenix last month.

Like many of his supporters, they believe that concerns about COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, are overblown, despite Trumps recent 180-degree shift on the subject.

I really dont know how contagious this thing is. It does seem like weve overreacted to a point, said Stephen Moreno, 69, adding that they nevertheless returned to their Chino, California, home and are abiding by the guidelines to stay away from others. Im in that high-risk category. And its driving me nuts. Id rather be out.

Trump downplayed the seriousness of the virus for six weeks after its rapid spread started raising concerns globally. He falsely claimed it was no worse than the seasonal flu, predicted without any scientific basis that it would disappear on its own come April and accused Democrats and the news media of trying to tank the stock market to hurt his reelection chances.

That unwillingness to prepare for its inevitable spread in the United States cost the country precious weeks that it could have spent aggressively ramping up the production of coronavirus tests and increasing intensive care capacity at the nations hospitals, pandemic experts said.

All this came two years after Trump dismantled the pandemic response team that his predecessor Barack Obama had created within the White House. Trump justified that move three weeks ago as a desire to save money Some of the people we cut, they havent been used for many, many years and falsely claimed he could hire them all back quickly if needed.