Of all the many things he did, I argue that this is the stupidest, most pointless and damaging thing he did. There was no upside to doing it. He went out of his way to destroy a program that had been running successfully out of sheer stupidity. He mainly hurt his voters (cattle farmers in rural areas), not democrats. It hurt him on the biggest issue he ran on - inflation.

It was a massive unforced error that he’s been scrambling for months to fix.

He could literally have done nothing and it would have been better.

Almost all of his other missteps and mistakes can be rationalised - there was some benefit to himself or someone who bribed him or voted for him. But this screwworm thing just perfectly encapsulates him as a person and his presidency as a whole - something works well for 70 years to protect Americans and he destroys it through malicious incompetence.

More info about how the program worked - America’s never ending battle against flesh eating worms (2020) - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea...