Once again, President Donald Trump has revised his predicted COVID-19 death toll in the U.S. to an even larger figure: More than 100,000.
During a pre-taped Fox Business interview that aired Thursday morning, Trump discussed the “tremendous lives lost” to the pandemic with Fox host Maria Bartiromo.
“We’re going to lose over a hundred thousand, perhaps, in this country,” the President told Bartiromo.
He tried to play down the new number, claiming that it was “at the bottom level of the scale” and repeating his talking point about how he had saved “2 million lives” in the early stages of the outbreak.
“But you’re talking about 100,000 more, little bit less, more,” Trump said. “Who knows?”
Last week, the President had said that the virus would kill “anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000” Americans, which was already an increase from his original projection of 50,000 back in early April.
The death toll in the U.S. has exceeded 84,000 as of Thursday morning, according to a tracker by John Hopkins University.
Watch Trump below:
Trump bumps up projected COVID-19 death toll again: “We’re going to lose over 100,000, perhaps, in this country." pic.twitter.com/aQXZlfkPIo
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) May 14, 2020
Well, he did say it was going to be zero.
And there are starting to be a lot of zeroes in 100,000.
“Look, if I had done what I was going to do to begin with—which is nothing—millions of people would have died. You should all be thanking me for changing my mind.”
His goalposts are apparently equipped with large steel casters.
“330 million, tops”
Tl;dr: ::shoulder shrug::