Despite receiving harsh criticism, President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would not have done anything differently in his administration’s coronavirus.
During a press conference with Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) and Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D), Trump was asked by a reporter whether he had any regrets about the administration’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
“Mr. President, with 4% of the world’s population and 30% of the outbreak what would you have done differently facing the crisis?” a reporter asked.
The president replied referencing the relatively low number of deaths among those infected.
“Well, nothing,” he said. “If you take New York and New Jersey, which were very hard hit and we were very, very low in terms of morbidity… you look at the dead, relatively speaking, we are at the lowest level along with Germany, us, there could’ve been some smaller countries, too, perhaps.”
On Wednesday, Germany announced its death rate due to COVID-19 had reached 0.046% with 8,270 deaths out of over 157,000 infected. The U.S. has a death rate at 0.06%.
Trump, then, shifted to the positive remarks made by White House physicians, Dr. Deborah Birx and world-renowned immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“I would like to ask you maybe about that, Deborah,” he said, turning to the physician. “We have done, you know, amazingly well.”
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The president also noted that his plan targeted China first.
“I think the biggest thing we did is stopping the inflow from China into our country and Deborah was a big supporter of that, I mean, in terms of how important it turned out and so was Tony [Fauci]… Tony said we saved thousands and thousands of lives.”
Earlier last week, the Republican-led anti-Trump political group The Lincoln Project posted a video denouncing the federal government’s delayed response to the pandemic.
