President Trump said the coronavirus death toll “is what it is” during an interview with “Axios on HBO” broadcast late Monday.
The president told Axios’s Jonathan Swan that the COVID-19 pandemic is “under control as much as you can control it” in the U.S.
“They are dying, that’s true. And you have — 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. This is a horrible plague.”
where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”
“You can’t do that,” Trump responded, prompting Swan to ask, “Why can’t I do that?”
The president maintained that the data should “go by the cases.”
“It’s surely a relevant statistic to say if the U.S. has X population and X percentage of death of that population vs. South Korea,” Swan said, citing reporting from Seoul showing 300 deaths out of the country’s population of 51 million.
“You don’t know that,” Trump responded.
“You think they’re faking their statistics? South Korea?” Swan asked.
“I won’t get into that because I have a very good relationship with the country,” Trump answered. “But you don’t know that, and they have spikes.”
.@jonathanvswan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”@realdonaldtrump: “You can’t do that.”
Swan: “Why can’t I do that?” pic.twitter.com/MStySfkV39
— Axios (@axios) August 4, 2020
No experts or international authorities have made serious allegations against the accuracy of South Korea’s coronavirus reporting.
During the interview, the president also focused on the U.S.’s accomplishments in ventilator production, testing increases and improved treatment that has decreased the total fatality rate. He also repeated the claim that the U.S. has counted more cases because it has conducted more testing.
Story cited here.
