Trump was responding to heated criticism from his Democratic rival Joe Biden, who blamed Trump for the high number of Covid-19 victims in the United States, which has recorded more than 200,000 deaths and more than seven million infections.
“When you talk about numbers, you don’t know how many people died in China, you don’t know how many people died in Russia, you don’t know how many people died in India,” Trump said at the debate in Cleveland. .
“They don’t give you an exact count,” he said.
Trump said “millions” could have died without his actions and again blamed the pandemic on China, which initially suppressed news of the disease when it emerged late last year.
American leaders frequently criticize China and Russia, but rarely take a negative tone about India, a growing American partner.
In February, Trump paid a visit to India at the invitation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who shares some of Trump’s nationalist orientation, and the two leaders headed together to a packed stadium.
India officially has more than 6.1 million coronavirus cases, second only to the United States.
But India’s leading pandemic agency said Tuesday that the actual number could be more than 60 million, basing its findings on blood tests in the densely populated country.
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