Most of us look back at the COVID years with a heavy heart. It was a time of fear, lockdowns, masks, job losses, and far too many people dying. It is hard to imagine anyone feeling nostalgic about it.
But at the U.S.–Saudi Investment Forum, Donald Trump gave a speech that left many people confused. He spoke about the pandemic years as though they were something positive. He talked proudly about producing gowns, masks, goggles and ventilators. He even said the United States became “the king of ventilators” and described the period as “an amazing time.”
For most people who lived through that nightmare, it was anything but amazing. The public was quick to point out how strange it is to remember a deadly global crisis with warm feelings. Many said just thinking about that time made them miserable again.
Trump also repeated his claim that the country had “the greatest economy in the history of the world” during COVID. Workers who lost jobs or struggled for months to find work remember things very differently. Economists estimated the U.S. economy shrank anywhere from fifteen to twenty percent during that period, one of the worst drops in modern history.
About the only dramatic moment people still talk about is when Trump himself caught COVID. There was even an internal discussion about him leaving the hospital and revealing a Superman shirt underneath his suit. That idea never happened but the story says a lot about how chaotic those days were.
Most Americans remember the pandemic as a time of hardship and loss. Hearing it described as something “amazing” only adds to the divide over how those years should be remembered.