Did Mike Pence really just try to pull that one off?

| 1:47 pm EDT June 26, 2020
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The coronavirus is now raging out of control in Florida, Arizona, Texas, and dozens of other states. Florida alone is reporting nearly nine thousand new cases in the past day alone. Even as the worst of governors try to figure out how to walk back their recent insistence that the coronavirus was over, Mike Pence stepped to the plate today.

While Pence acknowledged that coronavirus case numbers are spiking across the country, he also insisted that all fifty states are reopening safely and responsibly. Wait, what? Those two things can’t both be true. Either the “reopening” is being done correctly or the coronavirus is out of control as a result of the reopening. One or the other, not both. Yet Pence is trying to tell us that both things are true.

The problem is that by now most people are well aware that the coronavirus is getting worse, so Mike Pence has to acknowledge this in order to try to retain any relative credibility. But he also has to stick with the lie that “reopening” is a good idea and that the virus is under control, because Donald Trump and certain Republican governors have too much invested in that lie. As a result, Pence just sounds like an idiot.