How do we know whether the United States’ response to the coronavirus pandemic was a success? Should we measure this in terms of lives lost, total infections, total recoveries, or something else entirely? And once we land on a specific and quantifiable metric, is success measured in terms of how the U.S. stacks up relative to other countries? Or maybe it’s a comparison to how the U.S. has performed in comparison to past pandemics?

Right-wing media figures have offered a broad range of often contradictory measures for success during this crisis, but somehow they’ve always reached the same conclusions: President Donald Trump is responsible for every victory, and Democrats and the media are at fault for every failure. In success, we should cheer him; in failure, we should be grateful for his actions, which have no doubt saved us from an even worse fate. To them, he is infallible, and they’re more than willing to intellectually contort themselves to convince you of this, as well.

The lack of a specific, objective answer to the question of success makes it ripe for political spin and ever-shifting goal posts.

Between January and April, pro-Trump media have staked out a wide range of views on the virus, making use of whichever barometer for success makes the president look the most competent at the time. It’s sometimes hard to tell whether they’re echoing his words or he’s echoing theirs, but throughout, they’ve been remarkably in sync.

On January 22, Trump was asked if he was concerned about a possible pandemic. He responded, “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control.” On January 30, he said, “We think it’s going to have a very good ending for it. So that I can assure you.” On February 24, he tweeted, “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. … Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” On February 26, he said that the virus was just “15 people,” and “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” On February 28, he said, “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

Trump’s message was a clear attempt to project confidence in the administration’s response, and pro-Trump media were there to help spread this preferred narrative. Many of his most loyal supporters used the total number of cases and deaths in the U.S. to measure success, comparing the low total deaths from the virus to annual figures for other causes of death like the flu and car accidents.

Fox News host Sean Hannity, for instance, opened his February 27 show as he often does, with a full-throated defense of Trump and a celebration of his accomplishments. Hannity took time to laud Trump’s decision to restrict some travel from China, which he framed as the reason there had been zero American deaths from the virus. In an attempt to put this into perspective, Hannity noted that roughly 61,000 people died from the flu during the 2017-2018 flu season, and more than 100 people die each day in car accidents. See? Nothing to worry about.

As Trump continued to frame concern about the coronavirus as hype from his political enemies, his right-wing media allies followed suit. During a February 28 rally, Trump called Democratic concern about the virus “their new hoax” to hurt him politically: