President Trump spent Tuesday portraying West Virginia as a coronavirus success story. Its senator says that's dangerously untrue.
Before Tuesday, West Virginia was the last state in the nation that hadn't reported any cases of COVID-19, leading Trump to praise Republican West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice for "doing a good job." But as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) — a conservative Democrat who often votes with Trump — said in a Wednesday interview with CNN, he "hoped the president wouldn't go down that road and make it look like we were doing something special."
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Manchin warned how susceptible his state is to COVID-19 on the Senate floor on Monday, noting a Kaiser Family Foundation report that showed West Virginia has a huge portion of at-risk adults when it comes to possible coronavirus infection. A full half of West Virginia's adults have been deemed at risk of contracting COVID-19 — a higher proportion than any other state.
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