G’morning. Playbook:

52,459 Americans died from the coronavirus as of Saturday. At least. Which means that, by now -- 81 days since the first recorded death -- we’re close to losing more of our countrymen to this virus than we did in Vietnam.

FAR BE IT FOR US TO DIVINE what’s in anyone’s head or heart, but let’s take a look at the publicly available evidence to try to understand what’s consuming the White House right now.

-- THE ADMINISTRATION seems to have extensively participated in a piece in the NEW YORK POST about the president’s inability to carve out time for lunch because he works too hard.

MARK MEADOWS, the president’s chief of staff, gave what appears to be his first on-the-record interview for the piece, where he said this: “I can tell you that the biggest concern I have as a new chief of staff is making sure he gets some time to get a quick bite to eat.”

WAIT A SECOND. That’s his “biggest concern”?

THE FIRST GRAF OF THIS N.Y. POST piece is this: “President Trump’s schedule is so packed amid the coronavirus crisis that he sometimes skips lunch, his aides told The Post — refuting a report that the commander in chief spends his days obsessing over TV coverage and eating fries”

So, the WH was seeking to push back on a great @katierogers/ @anniekarni piece in the NYT, which was, in part, about how TRUMP is fixated on media coverage.

BUT, YA KNOW, WHEN YOU participate in a piece aiming to knock down the narrative that you’re obsessed with media coverage, you’re showing you are … obsessed with media coverage!

-- IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS pandemic, with people dying, the WHITE HOUSE attempted to rearrange the seats in the White House briefing room, and when CNN’s @kaitlancollins wouldn’t move, the administration threatened that the Secret Service would force her to.

EVERY WH has plenty of beefs with the D.C. press corps, some justified, many of them not. This president uses a bazooka when a fly swatter would do.

And in the midst of a widespread national tragedy, he is so occupied by these gripes, and so concerned with settling scores, that he has oriented the White House in that direction. Even with thousands of people dying by the day