While his administration has faced criticism for being slow to ramp up testing for coronavirus infections, President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that the problem was with his predecessors, saying the administration “inherited a broken system” that it “rebuilt.” That’s misleading.
In his March 30 appearance on “Fox & Friends,” President Donald Trump suggested an estimate that the novel coronavirus might kill a huge number of Americans was a new revelation.
President Donald Trump continued his misleading attacks on Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as it ravages the state.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, misleadingly claimed that 19 states — “almost 40% of the country” — “have less than 200 cases” of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. In fact, 17 states with 7.2% of the U.S. population have fewer than 200 confirmed cases each.
In a March 21 press briefing, President Donald Trump prematurely declared that automakers, including Ford and General Motors, were manufacturing much needed ventilators “right now.”
In this video, we look at President Donald Trump’s misleading claim that there’s “very strong evidence” to support his hope that a malaria drug can treat COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Hitting back at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s pleas for the federal government to provide more ventilators, President Donald Trump misleadingly claimed Cuomo rejected a 2015 recommendation to purchase 15,000 ventilators and instead “established death panels” and “lotteries.”
President Donald Trump and coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said the United States had done more testing for COVID-19 infections in eight days than South Korea had done in eight weeks, but that ignores the fact that South Korea has a much smaller population. On a per-capita basis, the U.S. lags behind the Asian country, and other nations.
President Donald Trump recently said “close to 100 million people died” from the 1918 Spanish flu, and that “if you got it you had a 50/50 chance, or very close, of dying.” But 100 million is a high-end estimate of global deaths from that influenza pandemic, and we found no evidence the case fatality rate for those who had it was 50%.
President Donald Trump has been holding daily press conferences to provide the latest information about the coronavirus from the federal government, but his rhetoric has sometimes been imprecise, misleading or outright incorrect.