Trump Abandons Early COVID Death Toll Projection, Now Admits It Could Hit 100K

President Donald Trump speaks during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, at the White House on March 23, 2020. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
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President Donald Trump hiked up his original projected death toll of 50,000 to 100,000 on Sunday.

“Look, we’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,” he told Fox News hosts Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier during a virtual town hall. “That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this.”

Later in the event, Trump pushed his projected number down slightly.

“I used to say 65,000,” he said. “Now I’m saying 80 or 90 and it goes up, and it goes up rapidly.”

In fact, the President used to say it would be 50,000. Back before that he said a handful of cases in the U.S. would soon go down to zero.

There was also a moment Sunday when Trump seemed to agree with his son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner, when Baier brought up Kushner’s claim that the administration’s response to the outbreak was “a great success story.”

“It is,” Trump said.

But then he took a step back after Baier asked him directly if he believed it was a success story.

“Well, it’s too soon to say that really, I guess, because we’re still in the middle of something,” Trump told the Fox News host.

“But certainly we would have lost a lot more people, Bret,” he added.

John Hopkins University reported more than 67,700 deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. as of Monday morning.

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Notable Replies

  1. Donald Trump can only be characterized as having the behavior of a dry drunk.

  2. He shouldn’t have said this, it’ll hit that new mark by the end of May, possibly even a week or 1 1/2 weeks prior.

    Next quote for the campaign videos.

  3. “Look, we’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,” he told Fox News hosts Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier during a virtual town hall. “That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this.”

    Why is he making this pronouncement in the present tense? He had access to the tools and technology to damped the virus’ effect, and just remember he chose to golf.
    I don’t blame him for the virus getting here, I blame him, Azar, Pence, Kushner, and et al that they fucked up the response.

  4. “Look, we’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,”

    We passed 75 to 80 deads about 7 weeks ago…

  5. 100,000 by May 20 could easily happen. This guy has no idea that 500,000 deaths by October is possible if social distancing becomes extremely lax.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

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