There are indeed some upsides to President Trump’s chaotic, off-the-cuff leadership style. But the president continues to show us that he is not well suited to lead this country through a crisis.

The latest example of Trump’s disappointing handling of the coronavirus pandemic came during his Thursday White House briefing. The president claimed that a possible cure for the coronavirus, chloroquine, a current treatment for malaria, has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. This undoubtedly gave many people hope that all this illness, economic suffering, and social dismay could soon be over.

The only problem? It isn’t true.

The Food and Drug Administration clarified in a follow-up statement : “There are no FDA-approved therapeutics or drugs to treat, cure or prevent COVID-19 [the coronavirus].” It’s important to note that because the malaria drug in question has received approval for other purposes, it can legally be prescribed “off-label” by doctors to treat the coronavirus. But this does not mean it is approved to treat the coronavirus, and it is sloppy for Trump to suggest otherwise.

Here are the president’s direct remarks :

When you go with a brand-new drug, you don’t know that that’s going to happen. You have to see, and you have to go — long test. But this has been used in different forms — very powerful drug — in different forms. And it’s shown very encouraging — very, very encouraging early results. And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. And that’s where the FDA has been so great. They — they’ve gone through the approval process; it’s been approved. And they did it — they took it down from many, many months to immediate. So we’re going to be able to make that drug available by prescription or states.

This isn’t an example of the liberal media twisting his words (which does regularly happen). Rather, Trump just got it flat-out wrong. Sadly, this isn’t the first time he’s mixed up the facts regarding the coronavirus.

As David French explained for the Dispatch, Trump made several massive factual errors in his first major coronavirus address:

In a prepared speech, in a time of national anxiety, he misstated the scope of his travel ban from Europe (it was not ‘all travel,’ and he incorrectly applied it to ‘trade and cargo’), and he wrongly said that insurance companies ‘have agreed to waive all copayments for coronavirus treatments.’ The waiver was for testing, not treatment.

This is unacceptable. The coronavirus is a true national crisis, and it is certainly not the time for partisan bickering or needlessly divisive attacks on Trump. But we deserve truthful leadership during a disaster — and there’s nothing partisan about demanding honesty from the president of the United States.