Trump's Attempt To Spin the Coronavirus Crisis Isn't Working
For Donald Trump, the mere appearance of success has always been more or less synonymous with success itself. Whether he’s gilding everything around him, constantly boasting of his various accomplishments and aptitudes, or posing as his own publicist to embellish his sexual exploits, Trump has clumsily applied a flashy veneer to his life. Trump has never been particularly gifted as a businessman, or even really as a television personality. But he seems to understand marketing: If he couldn’t actually be any of the things he claimed himself to be, he would spend his life trying to convince the world that he was.
or Donald Trump, the mere appearance of success has always been more or less synonymous with success itself. Whether he’s gilding everything around him, constantly boasting of his various accomplishments and aptitudes, or posing as his own publicist to embellish his sexual exploits, Trump has clumsily applied a flashy veneer to his life. Trump has never been particularly gifted as a businessman, or even really as a television personality. But he seems to understand marketing: If he couldn’t actually be any of the things he claimed himself to be, he would spend his life trying to convince the world that he was.
But the success he is now attempting to lay claim to is a much harder sell. More than 80,000 Americans have died in the coronavirus crisis, and cases are continuing to multiply. The economy has cratered, and jobless rates may soar past 20 percent. And his administration’s response is a disaster in progress, from the weeks he and his allies spent downplaying the threat to the ongoing shortages in resources and testing to his increasingly tired attempts at blame-shifting and distraction. With no proven treatment and a vaccine still far off, the nation remains as much in the throes of the pandemic as it was in March. Trump, though, is now claiming victory over the virus, suggesting—as son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner did last month—that the U.S. is now moving the public health phase of the crisis. “We have met the moment,” Trump said in a contentious press conference Monday, “and we have prevailed.”
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He later claimed that he was referring to America’s testing capacity, but his comments echoed remarks Kushner made two weeks earlier: “We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this,” he said in April, patting the administration on the back for a job well done as the president pivoted to pushing for a reopening of the American economy. The victory proclamation was ridiculous then, as the U.S. COVID-19 death toll neared 60,000, but is even more preposterous now; not only has the virus claimed more than 80,000 as of Tuesday morning, but it is currently spreading through the White House. Last week, Trump announced that Katie Miller—spokesperson for Vice President Mike Pence and wife of anti-immigration zealot Stephen Miller, one of the president’s closest aides—had tested positive for the virus after testing “very good for a long period of time.” That brings the virus into Trump’s inner circle, threatening the health of the president himself. That’s led the White House to increase its health safety protocols, including requiring masks to be worn by everyone but Trump—who has refused to wear one, even while touring a mask production facility, out of concern that it would make him appear weak.
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