Almost 60,000 dead Americans is not the 'great success' Trump claims it is: columnist

Writing in the Washington Post this Wednesday, Paul Waldman contends that while the Trump campaign would like to forget that the coronavirus outbreak happened, they'll nevertheless try to spin it to their advantage.

Waldman points to a recent appearance on Fox News by Jared Kushner, where he claimed that the U.S. is now on "the other side" in its fight against the pandemic.

"I think that we’ve achieved all the different milestones that are needed. So the federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story, and I think that’s really what needs to be told," Kushner said.

As Waldman points out, Kushner's idea of a "success story" is hardly a success, considering that almost 60,000 Americans have died from the virus so far.

"Meanwhile, the key to both containing the virus and allowing us to safely resume economic and social activity — widespread testing that will allow us to identify and isolate those who carry the virus — has been an abysmal failure," Waldman writes. "Just this week, months after the pandemic began sweeping across the country, the administration finally got around to releasing a plan to increase testing, a plan that mostly tells states that it’s their responsibility. We’re still conducting only a fraction of the tests we need."

According to Waldman, Trump and his allies think that if they just repeat over and over again that things are going great in America's battle against coronavirus, people will start believing it.

"This will be an excellent case study in the power of the president and his party to create an alternate reality," he writes. "But there’s one reason it will be difficult: The administration doesn’t control the flow of information."

Read the full op-ed over at The Washington Post.