During Monday’s Coronavirus Task Force briefing, New York Mag’s Olivia Nuzzi ended the briefing with a bizarre question for the Commander in Chief amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“If an American president loses more Americans over the course of six weeks than died in the entirety of the Vietnam war, does he deserve to be re-elected?” Nuzzi asked the president in the Rose Garden.
“So, yeah. We’ve lost a lot of people, but if you look at what original projections were 2.2 million, we’re probably heading to 60,000- 70,000– far too many. One person is too many for this,” President Trump replied.
“I think we’ve made a lot of really good decisions,” he continued. “The big decision was closing the border or doing the ban, people coming in from China– obviously other than American citizens, which had to come in– can’t say ‘You can’t come back to your country'”.
“I think we’ve made a lot of good decisions. I think that Mike Pence and the Task Force have done a fantastic job. I think that everybody working on the ventilators– you’ve seen what we’ve done there– have done unbelievable. The press doesn’t talk about ventilators anymore. They just don’t want to talk about them, and that’s okay,” the president said.
“That was a subject that no one would get off of. They don’t want to talk about them. We’re in the same position as testing. We are lapping the world on testing. And the world is coming to us, as I’ve said. They’re coming to us saying, ‘What are you doing? How do you do it?’ We’re helping them. I think we’ve done a great job. And I will say this: one person is too many,” he added. Video Below
President Trump’s official remarks:
Question to President Trump:
"If an American president loses more Americans over the course of six weeks than died in the entirety of the Vietnam war, does he deserve to be re-elected?"pic.twitter.com/zK8WnL82Hr
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 27, 2020
Within hours of President Trump’s decision to restrict travel from China on Jan. 31, top Democrats and media figures immediately derided the move as unnecessary and xenophobic.
Joe Biden quickly attacked what he called President Trump’s “record of hysteria, xenophobia and fear-mongering” after the travel restrictions were announced, and arguing that Trump “is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency.”
We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 1, 2020
“I had Biden calling me xenophobic,” President Trump told Fox News’ “Hannity” on March 26. “He called me a racist, because of the fact that he felt it was a racist thing to stop people from China coming in. Continued Below
In March, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) insisted at a Fox News town hall that he wouldn’t consider closing the U.S. border to prevent the spread of coronavirus, before condemning what he called the president’s xenophobia.
Unbelievable: @BernieSanders is asked if he would close the border to prevent Coronavirus from further spreading.
Sanders: "No." pic.twitter.com/xP9kIssjEd
— Chris Martin (@chrisjdmartin) March 9, 2020
Also in March, the “NO BAN Act” was brought to the House floor, with 219 Democrats co-sponsoring it. The No Ban Act was introduced by House Democrats seeking to reverse the president’s travel ban on several countries deemed by the administration to be high risk.
The White House, however, threatened to veto the bill should it reach the president’s desk.
Follow Lindsey Michelle on Twitter @PoliticalLinz, or on Facebook @RealLindseyMichelle.
