President Donald Trump reiterated that the coronavirus pandemic in the US is “under control” amid increasing death tolls from the infection.
In an interview with Trump, Axios’ Jonathan Swan asked the president about how his administration is handling the virus that kills 1,000 Americans a day.
“They are dying. That’s true, and — it is what it is,” Trump said. “But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it,” Trump said in the interview, which took place July 28 and aired Monday night on HBO.
“You really think this is as much as we can control it?” Swan asked. “A thousand deaths a day?”
“First of all, we have done a great job,” Trump said. He stressed how governors have managed the Covid-19 outbreaks in their own states rather than him taking personal responsibility. “I could tell you right now who the great ones are and who the not-so-great ones are. But the governors do it. We gave them massive amounts of material.”
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the coronavirus pandemic has already infected more than 4.71 million cases and killed at least 155,478 deaths.
Reopening states
Trump previously downplayed the threat of the coronavirus early in the year. When the crisis hit the economy in spring, Trump urged state leaders to remove their strict social distancing measures and reopen economies. While health experts such as White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci ask Americans to be careful to help curb the spread of the virus, Trump has at times done the opposite of the message by leading events with crowded audiences and sending mixed signals on whether to wear masks in public.
During the interview, Trump pointed out that his administration has done an “incredible” job fighting the pandemic. Swan asked Trump about how he interprets the trajectory of cases and deaths from Covid-19 in the US.
“Numerous categories, we’re lower than the world,” Trump said while checking a small stack of papers he was holding.
“Lower than the world? What does that mean? In what?” Swan said.
The president gave Swan a paper. The host responded, “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the US is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”
“You can’t do that ... you have to go by the cases,” Trump stressed.
Swan stressed the number of deaths in the US from Covid-19 in proportion to the population of the country. He compared the US with South Korea, a country with over 50 million people.
“You don’t know that,” Trump said.
“You think they’re faking their statistics?” Swan responded.
“Uh, I won’t get into that because I have a very good relationship with the country, but you don’t know that,” Trump said.
The president reiterated his claim that “because we do more tests, we have more cases.”
Swan said: “If hospital rates were going down and deaths were going down, I’d say terrific. You deserve to be praised for testing. But they’re all going up.”
