Although opponents of former president Donald Trump have found many grounds to criticize him on, among his most glaring presidential flaws in the eyes of the public was his response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is partially because of his penchant for sharing COVID-19 misinformation, which is partially what led researchers from Cornell University to identify him as the largest driver of what they described as the "infodemic." But Trump's critics found an even more direct reason for their ire when he admitted to journalist Bob Woodward that he intentionally downplayed the virus' highly infectious and potentially deadly reality.
To this, his supporters often suggest that it's unfair to blame Trump for COVID-19 deaths since they're occurring worldwide and would have done so in the United States whether he was president at the time or not.
However, a new report from The Lancet argues that it is possible to measure how many fatalities he was responsible for and set out to do precisely that.