Joseph Sabino Mistick: Facts are stubborn things

Americans have become far too familiar with the big lie. It is usually used to cover up a devastating truth or to sell us some public policy that was dreamed up by ideologues or business tycoons.

By the time the last Americans were airlifted out of Vietnam in 1975, nearly 60,000 young Americans had been killed. Throughout that war, we were told that we were winning and that victory was at hand. And the more controversial the war became, the more we were lied to by public and military officials who were afraid they might be blamed for losing the war.

In 2003, we were told that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and it was hard to resist the calls for war. There was plenty of evidence that Iraq had destroyed the weapons it once possessed, but none of that fit the narrative that was necessary to gain public support for an invasion. So they lied to us.

Not long afterward, standing directly under a “Mission Accomplished” banner, President George W. Bush declared, “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” That wasn’t true either, and we are still trying to get out of endless war in the Middle East.

And the coronavirus pandemic that is now rattling the world is getting off on that same wrong foot. At the beginning of last week, Donald Trump tweeted that the coronavirus was “very much under control.”

A day later, Larry Kudlow, the president’s economic adviser, told CNBC:

“We have contained this. I won’t say airtight, but it’s pretty close to airtight.” Why the president thought that Americans would be comforted by medical advice from an economist is still unknown, but both Trump and Kudlow were way off the mark.

On that same day, Nancy Messonnier, a Centers for Disease Control official, said, “As more and more countries experience community spread, successful containment at our borders becomes harder and harder. It’s not a question of if this will happen but when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illnesses.”

On Wednesday, Trump held a press conference, accompanied by public officials and disease control experts, and tried to show that he had it all under control. According to the president, this could be big or it could be little, it might be serious or it might not and it could pass by April or maybe last longer.

This health emergency comes after Trump severely cut the Department of Health & Human Services and CDC budgets. And there are numerous vacancies in the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, both of which are critical in global crises.

But when asked if he regrets shrinking those departments and firing those experts now that he needs all hands on deck, he was unfazed. And he quickly turned the press conference into a campaign stop, heaping praise upon himself and blaming his enemies.

By the end, he sounded like a real estate developer who dropped his fire insurance, betting that there would not be a fire. And now there is a fire. And now he is scrambling.