President Trump is the narrator of the Lincoln Project's latest ad against him.
Titled "Failure," it presents a brutal timeline of his response to the coronavirus crisis, beginning with Trump stating on Jan. 22, "We have it totally under control. One person coming in from China. It's going to be just fine." From there, the messages are similarly nonchalant, with Trump saying on Feb. 25 the country is "very close to a vaccine" and declaring on Feb. 27, "One day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear."
As the ad continues, and Trump calls the coronavirus a "new hoax" (Feb. 28) and asks if injecting disinfectant could get rid of it (April 23), a tally appears, showing the U.S. death toll from the virus. It goes up steadily, and reaches 113,000 around June 20, when Trump is shown telling supporters in Tulsa that he has done "a phenomenal job" leading the country through the pandemic.
The ad ends on July 21, with a clip of Trump standing in front of reporters during his first coronavirus briefing in months. The pandemic, he says, will "probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better. That's the way it is." In a comment under the video on YouTube, the Lincoln Project refers to the coronavirus as #TrumpVirus, and says, "We could have won, but our 'wartime' president surrendered." Watch the ad below. Catherine Garcia