It’s fine that Trump lied to us about the virus and that thousands of unnecessary deaths are the result. Totally fine.

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, and Jason Miller, a campaign senior adviser, tried to mitigate the damage caused by Trump’s taped confessions to Watergate journalist Bob Woodward, for his book Rage, by playing up the president’s handling of a crisis that has killed more than 190,000 in America.

“The president was calm and steady in a time of unrest and uncertainty,” McDaniel insisted on NBC’s Meet the Press.

That’s not the Trump we know. He’s very volatile and he has the attention span of a gnat.

“What would it mean if the president came out and said, ‘The sky is falling and everybody should be panicked’? He presented calm and a steady hand and a plan. And that is what a president should do.”

False choice dingdingding! That’s not what he should have said. What he should have said is that everybody should follow the medical advice of people who understand the subject because the virus is a serious thing. That’s all. Nothing about the sky falling, nothing about everybody please panic starting NOW.

On ABC’s This Week, Miller said Trump had always taken the coronavirus “very seriously” and claimed: “We encourage people very strongly to wear the masks.”

And that’s why we’ve seen Trump in a mask only twice. That’s why we’ve seen him sneer at journalists wearing masks several times. Much encourage strongly, very seriously.

The majority of attendees at a Trump rally in Nevada on Saturday were neither distanced nor wearing masks. At another rally in North Carolina earlier in the week, the president mocked social distancing as a tool to prevent the spread of infection.

That’s Trump taking it very seriously.

McDaniel was asked if Trump’s downplaying of the threat was a political gambit, suggesting his dire warnings of anarchy and lawlessness in the wake of recent protests against racism and police brutality showed “this isn’t a president who shies away from trying to incite panic or trying to fire folks up”.

“Think what would have happened if he’d have gone out and said, ‘This is awful, we should all be afraid, we don’t have a plan’,” McDaniel said.

Again – that is not the suggestion.

Another Trump loyalist, trade adviser Peter Navarro, was challenged on CNN’s State of the Union over the administration’s assertions it had acted swiftly in response to the pandemic, specifically in shutting down travel from China.

“[On] 31 January [he] pulls down the flights, saves probably hundreds of thousands of American lives,” Navarro claimed, even though the “ban” was only a partial restriction that still allowed tens of thousands to travel, while travel from Europe was not shut down till later, allowing the virus in that way.

Navarro also attempted to claim Trump had been “straightforward” with the American people, even though the president’s own words on tape confirm he was purposefully withholding information. The Trump adviser also attacked CNN, saying without apparent irony it was “not honest with the American people”, before being cut off.

“The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population,” host Jake Tapper said, “and the United States has more than 20% of the world’s coronavirus deaths. That is a fact. It does not matter how many times he insults CNN.”

Yes but CNN has cooties.