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Before the US elections, US President Trump put himself in a difficult situation: He admitted that he had downplayed the risk of corona. During an appearance, Trump draws a daring historical parallel.
US President Donald Trump has denied lying to Americans about the danger posed by the coronavirus. “I didn’t lie,” Trump said Thursday at the White House when asked by a reporter about it. “I said we have to stay calm, we must not panic.”
Then Trump attacked the journalist: “The way he phrased his question is a disgrace. It is a disgrace to ABC broadcaster. It is a disgrace to his employer,” Trump said, visibly upset. The journalist had previously asked him why the people of the country should continue to believe him when they knew that he had previously lied about the virus.
The background to this question is a new outreach book on the president that includes audio recordings. In interviews with investigative journalist Bob Woodward in March, Trump said he had deliberately downplayed the danger posed by the virus in public. The corresponding passages were published in the media on Wednesday. The remarks put Trump in danger shortly before the November presidential election.
Trump draws parallels with Churchill in WWII
During an election campaign appearance after the press conference, Trump drew a parallel between his appeasement in the crown pandemic and the behavior of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II. “When Hitler bombed London, Churchill, a great leader, would often stand on a roof in London and talk,” Trump said Thursday night (local time) at a campaign rally in Freeland, Michigan. “And he always spoke calmly. He said we have to show calmness. No, we did it well, and we did a job like nobody else.”
Trump referred to the advice of the London government to the British in World War II: “Keep calm and carry on” (something like: keep calm and carry on). “That ‘s what I did.” Churchill is said to have observed the Nazi bombings in London from a rooftop, but did not deliver a speech. In June 1945, after the end of the war, he spoke during the election campaign in a canopy, as captured in the photos.
The president of the USA continues to downplay the problem
Trump also presented the situation in the United States as better than in Europe. “If you look at the European Union right now, they have outbreaks like you’ve never seen them before and frankly their numbers are at much worse levels than the numbers here,” he said. He cited Italy, France and Spain as examples. Although the number of infections has risen again there, they are still at a high level in the US.
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However, Trump was confident that the United States would soon overcome the crisis. He ruled out another closure. He accused his rival in the November 3 election, Joe Biden, of using the pandemic for political ends.
According to statistics from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, more than 191,000 people in the United States have died after being infected with the coronavirus since the start of the corona pandemic. The number of new infections each day was more than 34,000 on Wednesday. In absolute numbers, the US has the highest number of corona deaths in the world, but not relative to population. The United States ranks seventh in this category. In the EU, only Spain has more deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.
