Day 1,192: Trump claims he never called the coronavirus a hoax. The tape doesn’t lie: he did.
More than 50,000 Americans have died from complications resulting from the coronavirus. It has affected every state and life and work as everyone knew it has ground to a halt for nearly all Americans.
While other nations have felt the effects of coronavirus too, many pursued very aggressive early pushes to fight the disease from spreading. For instance, South Korea, which found its first infected patient on the same day as the U.S., has seen less than 250 deaths in entire country. They are currently far closer to returning to normal than the U.S.
That fact, coupled with many, many others, is humiliating for Donald Trump. That has led him to try and rewrite history and make himself into some kind of savior despite all the sickness in the U.S.
During a February 28 rally in Charleston, South Carolina, Trump lambasted Democrats for trying to turn the coronavirus into a political issue. At that point, according to Trump himself, only 15 people had tested positive for the virus and there were zero deaths in the U.S. Yet Democrats were sounding the alarm, realizing the potential danger.
Trump, meanwhile, more interested in entertaining the crowd, assured them that the coronavirus was a “new hoax.” Trump’s campaign team loved the soundbite so much they shared it just hours after Trump’s voice stopped echoing.
Saturday, trying to erase the above video from memory, Trump claimed he was referring to the Democrats as a hoax, not the coronavirus.
In Charleston, Trump said:
“Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that, right, the coronavirus. They’re politicizing it…One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia and that didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax…’ And this is their new hoax. But, you know, we did something that’s been pretty amazing. We have 15 people [sick with coronavirus] in this massive country…We could’ve had a lot more than that.”
One does not need to be a linguist to figure out Trump’s meaning.
Trump referred to the coronavirus (“this”) being used (“is”) by the Democrats (“their”) over something he thinks is a novel non-issue (“new hoax”). He downplays the amount of sickness literally two sentences later, bolstering the only possible interpretation of his comments: the coronavirus is a hoax.
Trump referred to the Russia investigation as a hoax: something he said was based on lies.
Trump referred to impeachment as a hoax: something he said was based on a fake whistleblower.
And in February, Trump referred to both the Russian probe and the impeachment inquiry in the same vein as the coronavirus: as the playing up of something for unfair political gain.
His Saturday revisionist history that he was referring to Democrats as a hoax, is totally nonsensical. A group of people that exist can play a hoax or they could be hoaxed, but they can’t be a hoax. Trump’s February statement was that Democrats were playing a hoax by touting the dangers of coronavirus, which makes perfect sense from a sentence structure perspective (though clearly not one in facts).
Trump asked Saturday, of calling the coronavirus a hoax, “Who would say such a thing?”
Donald Trump would. Donald Trump did.
1,192 days in, 270 to go
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