After admitting that the U.S. Covid-19 deaths could reach 90,000, Trump bemoaned critics and claimed that Abraham Lincoln got better press.
“I am greeted with a hostile press the likes of which no president has ever seen,” Trump said at the Fox News town hall Sunday night.
“The closest would be that gentleman right up there,” Trump said, pointing to the 16th President’s statue. “They always said nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.”
The previous estimate of up to 60,000 deaths was conclusively surpassed over the weekend. As of monday, Johns Hopkins University tallies 67,687 deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S. The true toll is higher still, as the official death toll accounts for only a portion of the excess deaths occurring since the coronavirus pandemic began.
Look how CNN editorializes the remarks, in the second paragraph: “Trump’s comments … are likely to further polarize the raging politics of a current crisis that is stretching national unity.”
The real story is never the story itself but how many sides there are to it, which is two.