Trump Offers Lie After Lie Under
Lincoln’s Unblinking Gaze
‘IT’S
ALL WORKING OUT’
As the 16th president stared down at the 45th
president’s socially distant town hall, Trump rolled out a series of astounding
falsehoods.
Updated May. 04, 2020 12:01AM
ET / Published May. 03, 2020 10:26PM ET
Even
by President Donald Trump’s historically low standards, the town hall on
reopening the nation’s economy featured some astounding falsehoods on Sunday
night: that he was never warned about the novel coronavirus
until late January; that all 43,000 people who returned to the United States
from China after the implementation of his travel ban were tested; that the American people will have a vaccine by Christmas.
But
perhaps the biggest demonstrable lie told under the unblinking eyes of Abraham
Lincoln was Trump’s repeated insistence that, despite the mounting death toll
from the coronavirus pandemic and the collapsing national economy, “it’s all
working out.”
“It’s all working
out.”
“I
think it’s all working out. You know, the numbers are heading in the right
direction,” Trump said, in response to a question about workers at meat processing plants being
forced back on the job despite fears of spreading the virus. “It’s all working
out. It’s all working out. It’s horrible that we have to go through it, but
it’s all working out.”
The
town hall—billed by Fox News as “America Together: Returning to Work” and
broadcast live from the memorial built to honor a president who, earlier this
weekend, Trump said did less for black people than he has—was in
many ways a highlight reel of the president’s inadequate response to a pandemic
that has claimed more than 68,000 lives, including a record 2,909 just on
Thursday.
The
president casually announced that the final death toll could reach 100,000
people, more than 50 percent higher than he told Americans only a few weeks
ago. He made scientifically dubious claims about the speed and availability of
a potential vaccine—throwing in a vow to “be AIDS-free within eight years.” And
he saved his most emotional answer for a question from a New Jersey guidance
counselor who asked him to “please let go of those behaviors” and
“characteristics that do not serve you” when dealing with the press.
Trump’s
response to that request, as best as it can be distilled, included a rambling
list of supposed accomplishments unrelated to the pandemic, including increased
military spending and the formation of the “Space Force,” as well
as the assertion that not even Lincoln ever faced such mistreatment while in
office.
“I
am greeted with a hostile press the likes of which no president has ever seen.
The closest would be that gentleman right up there,” Trump said, nodding at Daniel
Chester French’s statue of the 16th president in the temple where, as Royal
Cortissoz’s epitaph states, “the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined
forever.”
“They always said
Lincoln, nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.”
“They
always said Lincoln, nobody got treated worse than Lincoln,” Trump said. “I
believe I am treated worse.”
In
the days since Trump meanderingly suggested that Americans might be able to
cure themselves of COVID-19 by injecting either sunlight or disinfectant into
their bodies, the White House has attempted to shift the focus of its
coronavirus response from public health to an economic message.
But
as question after question came in from across the country about the specifics
of Trump’s response to a pandemic that has effectively shuttered the national
economy, Trump primarily responded with boasts about past accomplishments,
mini-tirades about past grievances, or generalities about how the nation will
“win bigger than we’ve ever won before” once the crisis abates.
“You’re
gonna get a job where you’re gonna get more money, frankly,” Trump told a
single mom in Alabama who said she was facing eviction and struggled to pay
even the smallest bills. “I’ve got a great feel for this stuff.”
“I
want ’em to go back, yeah, I want to get our country back,” Trump said, in
response to a pair of questions from a teacher and student about his plan to
reopen the nation’s schools. “We have to go back. We have to go back. And,
whatever it is.”
“It
depends on where you’re coming from,” Trump told a D.C. restaurateur who asked
about specific protocols to keep restaurants safe. “It goes up and it goes up
rapidly,” he added of the death toll, but sunnily explained that the nation’s
dead are “at the very lower end of the plane.”
“We are going to have
a vaccine by the end of this year.”
Every
desired answer, from a timeline for opening restaurants at full capacity to
filling sports stadiums and college graduations, was predicated on Trump’s
enthusiastic prediction that “we are going to have a vaccine by the end of this
year.”
“The
doctors would say, ‘Well, you shouldn’t say that.’ I’ll say what I think,”
Trump said, doubling down on a vaccine development schedule that would surpass
even the most hysterically optimistic timelines put
forward by epidemiologists for the rollout of a potential vaccine. “I think
we’re going to have a vaccine much sooner than later… Look, a vaccine has never
gone like it’s gone now.”
At
one point, Trump marveled at the changes in everyday life as a result of the
pandemic, noting the yawning distance between himself and Fox News anchors Bret
Baier and Martha MacCallum. But that distance, while effective at halting the
spread of the deadly coronavirus, did little to stop the spread of another
pandemic: what World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus has called “an infodemic.”
“We’re
not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic,” Ghebreyesus told
the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 15, the
same day as Trump’s third-to-last all-day visit to one of his
golf clubs. “Fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus, and is
just as dangerous.”
