…and welcome to another day of coverage of the coronavirus outbreak, and the politics around it, in the US. I always start with the basic figures, from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland:
New York is the hotspot, other states are badly hit: New Jersey (7,871) and Michigan (4,053) and Massachusetts (4,004) have had the next most deaths.
The weekend saw Donald Trump lead his country through the crisis mostly by retweeting conspiracy theories and tweeting complaints before staging on Sunday night a Fox News town hall which saw more of the latter.
Fox News put the event at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, prompting the 45th president to complain that he had been treated worse by the press than the 16th – who, remember, guided the Union through a horrific civil war, managed to legislate slavery out of existence and was shot dead on a trip to the theatre.
Among other points, Trump boosted efforts in more than half of the states to reopen their economies despite warnings from public health experts that it could well be too soon to do so safely; said there would no more stimulus aid for struggling states without a payroll tax cut, a controversial move to say the least; and said he had "saved hundreds of thousands of lives" before projecting a final death toll of around 100,000, up from his previous estimate of 65,000 (see 67,677 figure above).
Earlier, White House task force member Dr Deborah Birx told Fox News Sunday: "Our projections have always been between 100,000 and 240,000 American lives lost, and that's with full mitigation and us learning from each other of how to social distance".
Trump also said "We may have to put out a fire", when asked if he was worried about a coronavirus resurgence in the fall.
And he said the administration would present evidence for its claim the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory "at the right time". The right time obviously wasn't ABC's Sunday talkshow earlier, where secretary of state Mike Pompeo made the claim and said he'd seen evidence, but didn't of course provide any.
Later the vice-president, Mike Pence, admitted his mistake in not wearing a mask while visiting the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota last week – a rare enough step in this administration.
Anyway, that Lincoln quote. I'm a Lincolnhead, so indulge me. But it's quite something:
They always said Lincoln – nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.
Paging Harold Holzer.
Here's some more reading as the day gets going: Bryan Armen Graham on what Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer had to say about anti-lockdown protests which Trump has supported. It's a striking headline…
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