Mission Accomplished? White House Science Office Credits Trump for ‘Ending the Covid-19 Pandemic’ as a First-Term Accomplishment

Photo credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Fact-check: False…x 70,000 a day.

The White House Science Policy Office made an outrageously inaccurate claim on Tuesday, sending out a press release with a list of President Donald Trump’s first-term accomplishments. Among them: “ending the Covid-19 pandemic.”

That is, of course, patently absurd. The nation is currently the throes of a third wave of the outbreak, in which positive tests, hospitalizations, and deaths are rising once again and the number of new cases is hitting record highs, now averaging more than 70,000 new infections per day.

In the first bullet of the statement, under “Highlights include,” the un-bylined Office of Science and Technology Policy memo proclaims in bold, all-capitalized letters: “ENDING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.”

It goes on to allegedly justify this claim saying: “From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Administration has taken decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, history, and government to understand, treat, and defeat the disease.” (Read the full memo in the tweet below.)

White House claiming victory for “ending the pandemic,” which is blatantly untrue.

Also “understanding our planet.” What does that even mean? pic.twitter.com/L7wYXXvJm7

— Jenna McLaughlin (@JennaMC_Laugh) October 27, 2020

Declaring the pandemic over and defeated, when thousands of Americans are still dying every week and a potential vaccine is still weeks away from approval at the earliest, evokes the infamous Bush-era “Mission Accomplished” banner hung on an aircraft carrier for a photo op just weeks into what would be a protracted, bloody, and years-long occupation of Iraq.

The press release was accompanied by a much longer OST report on the Trump administration highlights between 2017 and 2020, which does not claim credit Trump with “ending” the pandemic, although it does repeat the same, completely false “defeat this disease” phrasing.