News propaganda has been an ongoing subject in the media followed by the term “fake news.” In short, fake news is misleading information to promote a certain perspective. However, this term has been tossed around to the point where its definition has been obscured. This is because it is often being misused by President Donald Trump. Although Donald Trump frequently addresses numerous press outlets as “fake news,” he has also spread news propaganda in the form of misleading data such as the coronavirus data.
Oftentimes, Donald Trump would use this term in press conferences in order to either disregard evidence or to ignore pressing questions. During Trump’s coronavirus interview with Jonathan Swan from Axios, he boasted about America’s placement in deaths in relation to the coronavirus. Once asked about the situation America is in regarding the coronavirus, Trump directly implied that America was one of the best responding countries to coronavirus cases due to high amounts of testing. Trump stated “Well, right here, United States is lowest in numerous categories. We’re lower than the world. We’re lower than Europe.” After reading the same documents, Swan remarked that Trump was looking into deaths per cases rather than deaths per population.
Swan continued by saying that what Trump was boasting about could not have been more wrong. In fact, the United States was worse than Germany, South Korea, etc. Pressed, Trump replied “You can’t do that. You have to go by–look here is the United States. You have to go by the cases, the cases of death.” Trump confirmed that rather than looking into a more serious group of data such as the coronavirus deaths per population, he turned a blind eye and looked into deaths per cases. Donald Trump uses data given to him such as the coronavirus data and misrepresents it in order to imply his own perspective onto others.
Moreover, Donald Trump’s misleading data has put numerous people in danger by instilling the idea that the coronavirus should not be taken that seriously. Trump has already displayed seemingly unharmful data when comparing deaths to the coronavirus cases. However, due to the disparity between deaths per cases and deaths per population, the data Trump is showing conveys that the pandemic is nothing to worry about. This causes citizens of the United States to be nonchalant about the coronavirus and proceed to going to public events, not wear masks, and not social distance. This opposes recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC.) By not following CDC recommendations, the United States would have numerous spikes in coronavirus cases solely because of Trump sugarcoating coronavirus data to fit his perspective. Trump’s misuse of factual evidence is causing harm to others due to them being unconcerned of the pandemic.
Chart from the Washington Post.
In addition to spreading fake news himself, according to The Fact Checker’s database, Donald Trump has lied, made a false claim, and spread fake news 20,055 times as of July 9, 2020. The chart also shows Trump’s lie count increasing greatly towards the end of his year where it is more demanding due to the coronavirus and the 2020 elections. Straightaway, this contradicts what Trump says about fake news.
Trump shows hypocrisy towards news propaganda by claiming true evidence to be false while he himself is using evidence to mislead others to agree with his perspective. Despite his constant fulmination against the “lying” media, Trump’s misrepresentation of facts, especially of coronavirus data, has endangered many citizens by making the pandemic seem less serious than it is.