As he signed off on an $8.3 billion funding agreement to fight the coronavirus Friday, Donald Trump appeared to imply that the money was unnecessary because his administration already had the situation under control. “I think we’re in great shape,” the president said, as he approved funding to combat the deadly virus Friday. “It came out of China, I heard about it, and we made a good move: We closed it down. We stopped it.”

“It was a very early shutdown,” Trump added, "which is something we got right."

As is often the case, it wasn’t quite clear just what the president was talking about. A charitable interpretation of his remarks, delivered from the White House, would be that he was referring to his administration’s decision to bar most Chinese nationals from entering the U.S. and to quarantine those who had recently visited the country. Given his flip and highly misleading dismissals of the threat posed by Covid-19 in the past several weeks, however, it is equally plausible that he was claiming that his administration had actually successfully contained the virus.

That, of course, would be false; additional cases deaths have been reported in the U.S. in recent days as the disease continues to spread globally, and public health officials have continued to warn that an American outbreak is likely inevitable. Mike Pence, the very unqualified vice president Trump has tasked with coordinating the government response to the rapidly unfolding crisis, acknowledged Thursday that the country is currently unable meet demand for coronavirus tests—the latest symptom of the administration’s apparent lack of preparedness to adequately address the threat.

The $8.3 billion from Congress—about six billion dollars more than the administration had originally asked for, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle calling the White House’s initial request far too law—should help. But the president’s incompetence—it’s not “corona flu,” dummy! it won’t “miraculously” disappear in April!—and efforts to play down the crisis that he appears to view as a threat to his reelection could undermine his own government’s response to the epidemic. Just in the back half of this week alone, he suggested those infected could “go to work,” claimed Covid-19 was not much more dangerous than the seasonal flu, and theorized that the worldwide spread of the virus could actually help the U.S. economically — despite the fact that the markets have been scared shitless by the escalating crisis. Trump doubled down on the dubious suggestion on Friday when asked about the impact of the virus on stocks and the economy. First, he touted a positive jobs report—though, as the Washington Post noted Friday, the report largely “reflected the calm before the coronavirus panic gripped the global economy.” Then, he echoed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in suggesting—again—that the deadly virus’s spread across the globe is actually a great opportunity for the U.S. “A lot of people are staying here,” Trump said Friday. “They’re going to be doing their business here. They’re going to be traveling here. They’ll be going to resorts here. And, you know, we have a great place.”

“We’re going to have Americans staying home instead of going and spending their money in other countries,” he said.

Trump’s relentlessly sunny characterization of the crisis, despite expert assessments and the reality of the situation, suggests the president is still not taking this seriously enough to sufficiently combat the spread of the virus. Sure, his administration has more money now to put toward fighting it — but if Pence already has it under control, and the whole thing is actually helping the economy, why bother? Trump can insist all he wants that he and his staff have the matter under control. But it won’t be long before it becomes clear if he’s telling the truth or not. “[Trump] is lying,” Democratic Representative Ted Lieu tweeted of the president’s “we stopped it” remarks. “It has now grown & spread to 21 states with over 225 cases in the U.S. And we can’t contain it because we still don’t have enough test kits to know where the virus is.”

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