- President Trump in an interview broadcast on Sunday admitted that “everyone makes mistakes” in response to the coronavirus, but said that “eventually he will be right.”
- “It will go away and I will be right,” Trump told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, repeating a claim he has made since February.
- Since the start of the pandemic, the coronavirus has infected more than 3.7 million Americans and killed more than 140,000, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.
- Trump said it was his responsibility to manage the virus response on a national scale, but said “some governors did poorly.”
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President Donald Trump said in a lengthy Fox News interview that aired Sunday that he made mistakes in his response to the coronavirus, but again repeated his claim that the coronavirus will go away and that he will be “eventually” right.
“I guess everyone makes mistakes,” Trump told Chris Wallace during an interview broadcast on “Fox News Sunday.”
“I will be right eventually,” he added, referring to his long and repeated claim that the coronavirus will disappear. “I will be right eventually.”
“It will disappear, and I will be right,” he repeated.
The comment echoed those he has made since February.
“It will disappear. One day, it is like a miracle, it will disappear,” Trump said on February 27.
“And he will go. Just stay calm. He will go,” he said again on March 10.
Then on July 1, the president said, “I think we are going to be very good with the coronavirus. I think at some point that will just go away, I hope.”
Since the pandemic hit the United States, the new coronavirus has infected at least 3,712,491 people and has killed at least 140,120, according to data analyzed by John Hopkins University.
While the president said Sunday that it was his responsibility to manage the virus response nationwide and that he needed to “put everyone online” as president, he also blamed state governors for his response to the virus.
“Some governors have done well, some governors have done poorly,” he said. From the start of the pandemic, Trump criticized state governors, particularly Democrats, for their handling of the virus and its economic impact.
According to a Saturday report in The New York Times, California Governor Gavin Newsom had to do the Trump administration “a favor” that included personally thanking the president for federal aid in obtaining evidence of coronavirus.
Also in the Sunday interview, the president went on to suggest that the recent record increase in coronavirus infections was the result of an increase in testing, although in many regions that have seen sudden increases in the virus, the percentage of tests that have yielded Positive results has also increased.
According to Johns Hopkins University data, about 8.5% of COVID-19 tests currently test positive, compared to their low of 4.3% in early June. The positivity rate increased throughout the months of June and July, according to Hopkins data, as cases have skyrocketed in states like Texas, Florida, and Arizona.
In the same interview, Trump called Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has been at the forefront of the United States’ COVID-19 response and with whom his administration has publicly disagreed, an “alarmist”.
