While many medical experts warn that the worst of the coronavirus pandemic is yet to come, President Trump is already looking ahead to the recovery on the horizon. “There’s tremendous hope as we look forward and we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Trump told reporters. “Stay focused and stay strong. And my administration and myself will deliver for you as we have in the past.”

This is a long way from “American carnage,” a theme of Trump’s sometimes pessimistic inaugural address. Pundits regularly describe the president’s speeches as “dark,” “militant,” or “divisive,” and Trump has been warning about national decline, usually due to foreign malfeasance, since at least the 1980s. But a certain defiant self-confidence and optimism have also long been Trump hallmarks, with the coronavirus the latest example of him trying to will himself to success.