“Well she’s in over her head, and frankly, she should’ve made the speech live, which she didn’t do,” said Trump Tuesday morning. “She taped it. And it was not only taped, it was taped a long time ago, because she had the wrong deaths. She didn’t even mention the vice presidential candidate.”-
On its face, there’s no big surprise there. This is a President who hits back when attacked. Always. Like, every single time.
But if you read Trump’s attempt to denigrate Obama closely, you see that in trying to diss the former first lady, he dissed himself (bolding is mine):-
“She taped it. And it was not only taped, it was taped a long time ago, because she had the wrong deaths.”
Think of what Trump is saying here: Michelle Obama really screwed up her speech because she said 150,000 Americans had died from coronavirus when, in fact, that number is now well over 170,000.
Er, I don’t think that makes the point that Trump wants to make.
What’s worse, Michelle Obama pre-taping her speech and citing the coronavirus numbers that were accurate at the time, or the fact that 20,000 more Americans have since died from Covid-19 under Trump’s watch?
Uh, yeah.
What Trump’s comment reinforces is his belief that he bears no responsibility — and is not blamed by the public — for the country’s ongoing struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
“Well, look, you want to keep that number to be as low as possible. One American dying every day is too much. But if you look at where we were back in April, we had 2,500 Americans dying a day. And again, it was because the virus was spreading out of control.”
Reminding people that in the relatively short period of time between when Michelle Obama taped her convention speech and when it ran on Monday night, an additional 20,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 is a disastrous self-own by Trump. And what’s worse is, he probably doesn’t even get that.
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CNN’s Allison Gordon contributed to this report.