Dear Commons Community,

President Donald Trump was skewered yesterday for bragging that the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus would be lower if one subtracted the deaths from “blue” states. 

“The blue states had tremendous death rates,” Trump said. “If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at, we’re really at a very low level.”

Trump’s boast wasn’t even factually accurate; as many critics pointed out on social media, the United States would still have one of the world’s worst tolls from the virus even without deaths from “blue” states.

According to data collected by The New York Times, 3 of the top 6 states in terms of deaths have Republican governors and 5 of the top 10 voted for Trump in 2016.

In any case, Trump is president of all 50 states, each of which is populated with both Democrats and Republicans. And the Trump administration’s delayed response to the virus ― as well as the president’s confession to Bob Woodward that he downplayed the threat early on ― impacted everyone and caused a number of needless deaths.

Tony

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