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US President Donald Trump rejected claims that he lied to the American people about the coronavirus threat, as the consequences of his comments to veteran journalist Bob Woodward reverberated Thursday.
Various interviews between the president and Woodward for the latter’s new book give the impression that Trump deliberately downplayed the severity of the new coronavirus, describing the virus as “deadly” to Woodward in the spring at the same time as him. assuring the American public that there was no threat.
“I did not lie. We have to be calm, we cannot panic, ”the president said at a press conference at the White House on Thursday shortly before leaving for a campaign event in Michigan.
When the president was pointed out that other leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel had kept their cool but had also warned their citizens about the dangers of the coronavirus, Trump responded that Europe was “having outbreaks like never seen before. We have done much, much better than the European Union, ”he said.
He repeatedly seemed to pass the buck to Woodward, the journalist who broke the Watergate scandal in the 1970s. “If Bob Woodward thought what I said was wrong, then he should have gone to the authorities immediately. . . but he didn’t think it was bad, ”he said, noting that Woodward had had the comments for months. “The only people who think it was bad are the fake media.”
Attacks on Biden
In a press conference that sometimes resembled a campaign event, Trump defended his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, attacking his opponent in the November presidential election, Democrat Joe Biden.
“If he had been in charge of this very serious, highly contagious pandemic, the virus from China, countless more Americans would have died,” he said, accusing the Democrats of wanting to impose “a general unscientific lockdown.”
Describing what he said was Biden’s “failed approach to swine flu” while serving as vice president of the Obama administration, Trump claimed that his opponent “lacks the character, intelligence or instinct to do the right thing.”
He again underscored his decision to impose a travel ban on China in the early days of the pandemic, stating that the United States has “turned a corner” in terms of coronavirus.
“We are going to get through this, and right now we are rounding the last corner. A lot of good things are happening with vaccines and therapies. “
The president was speaking as the Biden campaign launched a new digital ad attacking Trump’s public attempts to downplay the severity of the coronavirus, based on audio recordings of his conversations with Woodward.
Hours earlier, at her weekly press conference at the United States Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the president of showing “contempt” for the American people in his comments to Mr. Woodward, which were recorded on tape.
“What the president did. . . in those comments he showed his contempt: contempt for the American people and their health, contempt for science, contempt for any real effort to squash the virus, contempt for his supporters, his children, his parents, “he said. “He concealed the facts and refused to take the threat seriously, leaving the entire country exposed and unprepared.”
Stimulus package
Meanwhile, as the United States House of Representatives prepared to return to Washington, DC, after the summer break, the Senate did not pass a new stimulus package for the coronavirus. Dubbed the “skinny” bill, the $ 500 billion bill was blocked by Democrats in the Senate who deemed it insufficient.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer dismissed the bill as “useless,” while Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accused Democrats of caring more about politics than American families. .
More than 190,000 people have died in the US from Covid-19.
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