Trump Continues To Falsely Downplay COVID After US Death Toll Reaches 250k

President Donald Trump shrugs after a press conference following the historic US-North Korea summit in Singapore on June 12, 2018. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

In the middle of pretending he didn’t lose the election, President Donald Trump resumed his attempts to put a rosy spin on his disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now killed more than a quarter of a million Americans, on Friday morning.

Trump retweeted a chart from a Twitter account named “Hydroxychloroquine News” showing that the U.S. had a smaller “case fatality rate” on October 9 than six other countries.

“I have seen the claim that the United States has a higher fatality rate from Covid-19 than other wealthy nations. This claim appears to be entirely false and perhaps politically motivated,” the account, named after the antimalarial drug Trump falsely touted as a miracle cure for COVID-19, tweeted.

However, the U.S. indisputably has the highest COVID-19 death toll in the world, and even the description of the chart Trump retweeted notes that its data is a “poor measure of the mortality risk of the disease.”

Trump also tweeted that “[t]here will be no lockdowns other than those done by certain Democrat governors!” indicating yet again the President’s refusal to take a firm hand with the pandemic.

As part of his refusal to recognize his electoral defeat, Trump has blocked President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team from accessing the government’s material on COVID-19, including plans for distributing the vaccine.

Latest News

Notable Replies

  1. Avatar for iamwil iamwil says:

    Trump presumes all of us are reading out of the same fictionary.

  2. He won’t turn it over to MORE RESPONSIBLE people, he continues to lie…it’s almost like he wants Biden to ‘inherit’ a total sht show and then he can feed the Deplorables more horsepucky about how the Democrats trashed his ‘accomplishments’…

  3. Putin got his money’s worth.

  4. Avatar for jpc jpc says:

    The man is seriously ill. His inability to deal with reality is past political concerns. People continue to die as a consequence of his illness. He may be “functional”, but he has an illness that is putting this country at risk both short and long term. The Republican Senate and Party leadership has abdicated any role in preserving our institutions, and have allowed low level individuals to take the brunt of the nation’s anger. We should no longer be deferential to the current President - lives are at stake and while the same may have been true in the past, it is no longer an open secret but the apparent declared Republican policy.

  5. It is possible he won’t release official information on their efforts on COVID because they have done nothing.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

55 more replies

Participants

Avatar for mondfledermaus Avatar for fargo116 Avatar for stootch Avatar for teenlaqueefa Avatar for thebigragu Avatar for christianhankel Avatar for tacoma Avatar for danny Avatar for lastroth Avatar for iamwil Avatar for tao Avatar for pine Avatar for dommyluc Avatar for castor_troy Avatar for expatls1954 Avatar for katscherger Avatar for cub_calloway Avatar for moderately Avatar for greenman66 Avatar for rockitttla Avatar for mec Avatar for Paracelsus Avatar for ClutchCargo Avatar for geographyjones

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: