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10 Times MAGA White House Lied About The Deadly COVID-19

10 Times MAGA White House Lied About The Deadly COVID-19

COVID-19 Trump lies
Here are 10 times Donald Trump’s MAGA White House lied and misled the public about the extent of the deadly COVID-19 virus. Trump speaks about the coronavirus at the White House, Feb. 29, 2020, in Washington, D.C. Also pictured are Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, Vice President Mike Pence, Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

It would be an understatement to say Donald Trump and his White House have been sending mixed messages about the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. On Twitter and beyond, Trump has misinformed the public about the coronavirus at a time of crisis when leadership is desperately needed.

“Trump has littered his public remarks on the life-and-death subject with false, misleading and dubious claims. And he has been joined, on occasion, by senior members of his administration,” CNN reported.

CNN recently published 28 ways the president and his team have issued inaccurate statements about COVID-19. Here are the top 10.

Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 69: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin goes solo to unpack the question: Was Barack Obama the first political anti-Christ to rise in Black America?

Hot weather kills the virus

On February 10, Trump said, without revealing any evidence, that the coronavirus “dies with the hotter weather.”

He said on Fox Business, “You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather.” He told state governors, “You know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April.” And he said at a campaign rally, “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. I hope that’s true.”

Experts were not saying this. Instead, they’re saying that it’s too soon to know how the novel coronavirus (we’ve never had this one before) would respond to changing weather. “It would be reckless to assume that things will quiet down in spring and summer,” Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, told CNN. “We don’t really understand the basis of seasonality, and of course we know we absolutely nothing about this particular virus.” 

All under control

According to Trump, the coronavirus situation in the U.S. is “under control.” Very much so. On Feb. 24, he tweeted: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”

This, despite 53 confirmed cases on the day of his tweet. As of March 13, there are 1,840 cases and 41 deaths in the U.S.

COVID-19 has been contained

“We have contained this, I won’t say airtight but pretty close to airtight,” White House National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow said on Feb. 25. On March 6, he said it again — that the coronavirus “is contained” in the U.S. Kellyanne Conway, who is a counselor to the president, made similar comments the same day.

“In the U.S. it is the opposite of contained,” said Harvard University epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch, director of Harvard’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. “It is spreading so efficiently in so many places that it may be difficult to stop.”

Coronavirus ‘is a flu

On Feb. 26, Trump wrongly stated that the coronavirus “is a flu.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Congress on March 11 that the mortality rate of COVID-19 is “10 times” that of the flu’s 0.1 percent mortality rate.

Close to zero

On Feb. 26, Trump predicted that the number of U.S. cases is “going very substantially down” to “close to zero.”

Trump said, “I think every aspect of our society should be prepared. I don’t think it’s going to come to that, especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.” And he said: “And again, when you have 15 people, 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.”

The number of U.S. cases and deaths was going up, not down. 

More people dying from the flu

On Feb. 26, Trump wrongly said the flu death rate is “much higher” than that of COVID-19. 

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN chief medical correspondent, told Trump, “Mr. president, you talked about the flu and then in comparison to the coronavirus. The flu has a fatality ratio of about 0.1 percent.” 

Trump replied, “Correct.” But Trump later disputed the figure, saying during a Feb. 26 coronavirus press conference, “And the flu is higher than that. The flu is much higher than that.”

COVID-19 will miraculously disappear 

On Feb. 27, Trump hinted at a “miracle” in regard to the coronavirus.

Trump said, “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear. And from our shores, we — you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We’ll see what happens. Nobody really knows. The fact is, the greatest experts — I’ve spoken to them all. Nobody really knows.” He made similar comments later in the outbreak, saying on March 10, “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

Vaccine on the way

According to Trump, a vaccine is coming “relatively soon.”

Trump said, “We had a great meeting today with a lot of the great companies and they’re going to have vaccines, I think relatively soon. And they’re going to have something that makes you better and that’s going to actually take place, we think, even sooner.”

Experts say a vaccine was “a year to a year-and-a-half” away — and they told Trump so. 

It’s Obama’s fault

On March 4, Trump falsely claimed that President Barack Obama impeded testing. Trump says he reversed a decision by Obama’s administration that had impeded testing for the coronavirus. “The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing,” Trump said. “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.” 

Then Trump said on March 5: “They made some decisions which were not good decisions…We undid some of the regulations that were made that made it very difficult, but I’m not blaming anybody.”

In fact, CNN reported, there is no Obama-era decision or rule that impeded coronavirus testing

Just arrived

On March 5, Trump wrongly claimed the virus had only hit the U.S. “three weeks ago.”

Trump said, “We got hit with the virus really three weeks ago, if you think about it, I guess. That’s when we first started really to see some possible effects.” The fact is, the U.S. had its first confirmed case of the coronavirus on Jan. 21, more than six weeks before Trump said.