Eager to return to normal, Trump and Pence offer questionable coronavirus data

A career filled with tricky sales pitches has reached its apex for President Trump. With Americans dubious of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and nervous about trying to return to normal too quickly, Trump hopes to convince the country that some places or some states can begin to scale back social distancing measures that have helped contain the virus’s spread.

To do so, he and Vice President Pence on Thursday unveiled data they hoped would bolster their case that the United States is on the mend. Unfortunately, those data were, not for the first time, misleading and incomplete.

Trump began the day’s coronavirus news conference by articulating the steps that had been taken to combat the virus and the positive results that had followed. Part of his defense of rolling back containment measures has consistently been that some places in the country have only been affected by the virus to a limited degree. On Thursday, he offered a statistic aimed in the same direction. Continue reading.