To the Trump White House, every coronavirus wildfire is an ember
President Trump turned to a visual aid as he briefed the media on the coronavirus pandemic Thursday.
“This is a copy of the map, and this is a — you have it right behind me,” he said. “That’s really very much indicating where the problems are. You see from — from that, it’s in great shape — lots of it,” meaning most of the country.
“The Northeast has become very clean,” he continued. “The country is in very good shape, other than if you look South and West — some problems. That will all work out.”
Well, yeah, except for the Southern and Western parts of the country, all was well.
This effort to play down the breadth of the pandemic by highlighting its narrow geographic focus has become a hallmark of the Trump administration’s response. With the president’s resumption of daily briefings in recent days, we’ve seen that repeatedly, from his broad assessment that the outbreak was contained to half the country to his even more narrow focus on nursing homes. It’s an approach that harks back to his celebrations of his electoral victory in 2016: If you can point to large swaths that show what you want to show, your case is made.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/24/trump-white-house-every-coronavirus-wildfire-is-an-ember/
