The RNC retains referring to Covid-19 up to now tense, however each day deaths proceed

Greater than 1,100 American deaths from Covid-19 had been reported on Tuesday, however you wouldn’t know that from watching the Republican Nationwide Conference.

Audio system throughout Tuesday’s portion of the RNC repeatedly referred to the coronavirus pandemic up to now tense, as if it’s one thing the US has already overcome because of President Donald Trump’s management. In actuality, the virus continues to ravage the nation, and Trump hasn’t developed a plan to get issues underneath management past blustering and buck-passing.

The worst offender was White Home economics adviser Larry Kudlow, whose speech on Tuesday made it sound just like the coronavirus was over.

“It was terrible,” Kudlow stated. “Well being and financial impacts had been tragic. Hardship and heartbreak had been all over the place. However presidential management got here swiftly and successfully with a rare rescue for well being and security to efficiently struggle the Covid virus.”

In actuality, whereas each day new Covid-19 circumstances have trended downward over the previous month or so, there have been nonetheless 36,679 of them within the US on Tuesday based on the Covid Monitoring Challenge. On Monday, the US had extra new circumstances than all different international locations aside from Brazil and India.

And whereas Trump desires folks to imagine the financial restoration from Covid-19 is already largely full, the unemployment fee stays over 10 % and weekly jobless claims have truly began to tick upward.

Kudlow wasn’t the one offender. The primary objective of Cissie Graham Lynch’s speech was to demonize abortion, however she referred to Covid-19 up to now tense. (“Even through the pandemic, we noticed how rapidly life can change.”) And Melania Trump described the coronavirus as one thing that “swept throughout the nation,” although she did go on to increase her “deepest sympathy … to everybody who has misplaced a liked one, and my prayers are with those that are sick or struggling” — feedback that stood out as a result of so many audio system merely pretended the pandemic isn’t taking place.

All this got here a day after the RNC went to painstaking lengths to painting Trump as a visionary chief who helped the US conquer the coronavirus, versus “Democrats, the media, and the World Well being Group,” all of whom “received coronavirus fallacious.”

However as my colleague Ian Millhiser detailed, all one has to do is take a look at a chart of recent each day circumstances within the US in comparison with different developed international locations that extra successfully contained the virus to know how overtly that argument turns actuality on its head.

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