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While most of the speakers leaned into the anger that has long animated Trump’s base, a few standouts rewrote history in order to portray Trump’s presidency as a great success story, including Pompeo, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow and the first lady, who delivered what was likely her longest public speech ever. 

Pompeo praised Trump’s foreign policy, saying his own family was “more safe, their freedoms more secure, because President Trump has put his America First vision into action.”

In a nod to the damage Trump has inflicted on ties with traditional U.S. allies, Pompeo said, “It may not have made him popular in every foreign capital, but it has worked.” He went on to claim several questionable foreign policy victories for Trump, including that the Islamic State is now “wiped out,” because Trump authorized the killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Kudlow, too, offered a rosier picture of the where the country is today than many Americans are actually experiencing.

“There’s a big change in attitude happening. The American Spirit is picking up,” Kudlow said after listing several coronavirus economic aid programs that Congress passed and Trump signed this spring. “Car sales are booming. Retail spending is booming. And workers are going to have to produce new inventory to restock those shelves. That means get ready for a big third and fourth quarter, folks,” said Kudlow. “The jobs numbers just keep coming out better than anyone expected.” 

But that’s not entirely true. While some companies are bringing workers back, a virus resurgence this summer effectively ended the recovery the began late this spring. Last week alone, 1.1 million Americans filed first-time unemployment claims, a number that was worse than analysts had been expecting.

And while equities markets have recovered much of the value they lost this spring, this doesn’t help the 31 million Americans who are currently receiving some kind of unemployment benefits.

Exactly six months ago to the day from Tuesday, Kudlow claimed in an interview that “We have contained [coronavirus]. I won’t say airtight but pretty close to airtight.”

In the six months since he said that, more than 175,000 Americans died from Covid-19.