Trump quotes about Coronavirus
Nobody is blaming the President for Coronavirus. Even many of his critics appreciated his early action to ban travel from those who visited China. But, everybody expects the President to be truthful. Each of the following are half-truths (a couple), total BS (many of them), or total lies (majority of them). I compiled these from a WaPo Opinion piece.
- “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” — Jan. 21, 2020 (interview)
- “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” — Feb. 2 (interview)
- “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” — Feb. 10 (campaign rally)
- “The level of death with Ebola — you know, at the time, it was a virtual 100 percent.” — Feb. 25 (news conference)
- “We’re very close to a vaccine.” — Feb. 25 (news conference)
- “When you have 15 [cases in the United States], and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Feb. 26 (news conference)
- “This is a flu. This is like a flu.” — Feb. 26 (news conference)
- “The flu in our country kills from 25,000 people to 69,000 people a year. That was shocking to me. And so far, if you look at what we have with the 15 people and their recovery, one is, one is pretty sick, but hopefully will recover, but the others are in great shape.” — Feb. 26 (news conference)
- “I don’t think it’s inevitable. It probably will. It possibly will. It could be at a very small level, or it could be at a larger level. Whatever happens, we’re totally prepared.” — Feb. 26 (news conference)
- “But the same vaccine could not work? You take a solid flu vaccine — you don’t think that would have an impact or much of an impact on corona?” — March 2 (remarks)
- “I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number. Now, this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this.” — March 4 (interview)
- “I will say, though, the H1N1, that was swine flu, commonly referred to as swine flu. And that went from around April of ’09 to April of ’10, where there were 60 million cases of swine flu. And over — actually, it’s over 13,000. I think you might have said 17,000. I had heard it was 13,000, but a lot of deaths. And they didn’t do anything about it.” — March 4 (interview)
- “The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing. And we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion. That was a decision we disagreed with. I don’t think we would have made it, but for some reason it was made. But we’ve undone that decision.” — March 4 (remarks)
- “I don’t want any deaths, right? But over the last long period of time, when people have the flu, you have an average of 36,000 people dying. I’ve never heard those numbers. I would — I would’ve been shocked. I would’ve said, ‘Does anybody die from the flu?’ I didn’t know people died from the flu — 36,000 people died.” — March 6 (remarks)
- “Anybody that wants a test can get a test.” — March 6 (remarks)
- “This blindsided the world. And I think we’ve handled it very, very well.” — March 9 (news conference)
- “I met with the leaders of health insurance industry, who have agreed to waive all co-payments for coronavirus treatments.” — March 11 (prepared speech)
- “And taking early intense action, we have seen dramatically fewer cases of the virus in the United States than are now present in Europe.” — March 11 (prepared speech)
- “This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history.” — March 11 (prepared speech)
- “I want to thank Google. Google is helping to develop a website. It’s going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location.” — March 13 (news conference)
- “As you know, Europe was just designated as the hot spot right now, and we closed that border a while ago.” — March 13 (news conference)