President Donald Trump thinks he’s doing a fabulous job getting the country through the coronavirus crisis. He’s more than happy to boast about it.

But Trump spent weeks, if not months, downplaying the seriousness of the virus while pushing his political agenda of boosting his own brand and trying to shut down U.S. borders.

In fact, the president really didn’t want to do much of anything about the virus. He tried to assure people that it would be gone by April. Nothing to see here.

On Feb. 10, he repeatedly predicted ― at a meeting with governors, at a campaign rally and in a Fox Business interview ― that the coronavirus would no longer be a problem by April. He then made this claim at least three more times a few days later.

On Feb. 10, there were 12 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University. Now there are nearly 200,000. And on Tuesday, the death toll in the U.S. surpassed 3,000, making the virus more deadly than the 9/11 terrorist attacks that reshaped much of American life.

Medical experts never agreed with Trump’s rosy prediction. But as usual, science didn’t stop Trump from saying whatever he wanted.

“We don’t know a lot about this virus,” CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said on Feb. 13. “This virus is probably with us beyond this season, beyond this year, and I think eventually the virus will find a foothold and we will get community-based transmission.”