1. Trump didn't lose by a quarter of a million votes. He lost by about one-sixth of that. If 23,000 people in AZ, WI, and GA had voted Trump instead of Biden, the Electoral College would be tied, the election would go to the House, votes would be done by state, and Trump would be re-elected.
2. While it's possible that if Trump weren't involved, the election could have come down to how Covid was handled, I don't think we have much evidence that it made much of a difference here. Y'all are assuming that voters weigh the pros and cons of each candidate, their abilities, performance, and policy proposals, and decide accordingly. While that is logical, I don't think that's actually true.
In fact, I think it's backwards. People don't decide how they feel about Trump based on his Covid response; people decide how they feel about his Covid response based on how they feel about Trump. That's why his approval rating did not really change much during his term.
This is a summary of the Gallup polling - Trump's approval went down for a while when the Covid crisis hit, then returned to its normal level.
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And his one problem is he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death.