DONALD TRUMP’S declarations on coronavirus are about as convincing as his false blond rug. 

One US media source has counted 1,517 misrepresentations, falsifications, untruths and just plain lies from their president over just the coronavirus pandemic. 

Many are tweets in the middle of the night, so some dates may be a day out. We don’t have room to print them all here. This is just small selection:

January 22: “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control,” he said. “It’s going to be just fine.”

January 24: “It will all work out well.” 

January 28: “Johnson & Johnson, one of America’s biggest health companies are working on a vaccine.” Trump made Woody Johnson his ambassador to Britain when they both thought profitable bits of our NHS might be offered for sale by the Tories.

January 29: “The risk of infection for Americans remains low.”

January 30: “There are only five coronavirus cases in the entire US.” 

January 31: Non-citizens who had visited China banned from entering the US. “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” 

February 1: “We will not use tests for the virus produced by the World Health Organisation.”

February 7: “The coronavirus will weaken when we get into April, in the warmer weather.” 

February 23: “We had 12, at one point. And now they’ve gotten very much better. Many of them are fully recovered.” 

February 24: “The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.” 

“Fake News channels are doing everything possible to make the coronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible.”

February 27: “I blame the spread of the virus on immigrants. We may close the border …  It is going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”  

February 28: “Coronavirus … this is their new hoax.” This on the day they announced the first death in the US from the virus.

March 1: “I never said people that are feeling sick should go to work.” 

March 4: On this day he falsely accused Obama of rolling back regulations to limit laboratory tests. In fact Obama’s administration never implemented such rules.

March 5: “We have a perfectly co-ordinated and fine-tuned plan at the White House for our attack on coronavirus. We moved very early to close borders to certain areas, which was a Godsend … Gallup just gave us the highest rating ever for the way we are handling the coronavirus situation.” Gallup hadn’t.

March 10: When the cruise ship, Grand Princess, anchored off California with 19 confirmed cases, Trump said: “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault … When people need a test, they can get a test.” They couldn’t. 

March 11: “We will suspend all travel from Europe, except the United Kingdom, for the next 30 days. The travel restrictions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo but various other things as we get approval.”

He misread “not only apply” as “not apply.” Whoops, a quick change of policy to match what he said rather than what he was supposed to say, now “trade and cargo would not be subject to the restrictions.”

March 12: “All US citizens arriving from Europe will be subject to medical screening, virus testing, and quarantine if necessary … If an American is coming back or anybody is coming back, we’re testing.” They weren’t, of course.

March 13: “Two very big words,” he said as he finally he declared a national emergency … Google engineers are building a website to help Americans determine whether they need testing for the coronavirus and to direct them to their nearest testing site.” Nobody had told Google. 

March 14: “We are doing very precise Medical Screenings at our airports.” They weren’t.

March 16: “We have a problem that a month ago nobody ever thought about.” Many countries had thought a lot about the coming pandemic but not Trump’s US.

March 17: “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was declared a pandemic.”

March 18: “I always treated the Chinese virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning, including my very early decision to close the borders from China — against the wishes of almost all. Many lives were saved.” 

March 23: “If the economic shutdown continues, deaths by suicide will definitely be far in greater numbers that the numbers that we’re talking about for coronavirus deaths.” 

March 24: Trump predicts it will all be over by Easter. “We’re going to be opening relatively soon … I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter … I think Easter Sunday and you'll have packed churches all over our country, I think it would be a beautiful time.” 

March 26: Hours after the United States became the nation with the largest number of reported coronavirus cases worldwide, Trump appeared on Fox News and denied any shortages of medical supplies, boasted about the country’s testing capacity, and criticised President Obama’s response to an earlier outbreak of a different disease.

March 26: “I don’t believe we need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators.” 

March 27: “I am calling for urgent steps to produce more ventilators.”

March 30: “If my administration keeps the death toll to 100,000, it will have done a very good job … more than a million Americans have been tested for the virus, more than any other country by far. Others are not even close.”

March 31: “US in good shape to meet the peak … I think we’re going to be in a very good shape … I should be congratulated on my administration’s progress in fighting the virus … I know South Korea better than anybody. Do you know how many people are in Seoul? Thirty-eight million people. That’s bigger than anything we have.” (Seoul’s population is less than 10 million.)

April 1: “I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead. This is going to be a very, very painful two weeks … hospital staff may be stealing masks and selling them on the black market … if we could hold deaths down to 100,000 — it’s a horrible number, maybe even less, but to 100,000, so we have between 100,000 and 200,000 — we altogether have done a very good job.”

To be continued … unfortunately.