After months of denial, Trump now says keeping US deaths to 100,000 would be a 'good job'
Just
over a month after proclaiming that the number of
coronavirus cases in the United States would soon "be down to close to
zero," President Donald Trump said during a press briefing on the White
House lawn Sunday that limiting U.S. deaths from the pandemic to between
100,000 and 200,000 people would mean his administration and the country as a
whole did "a very good job."
Speaking
as the death toll from the novel coronavirus climbed above 2,300 in the
U.S.—which has the most confirmed cases of the virus in the world—Trump
cited recent research warning that 2.2 million
people in the U.S. could die from COVID-19 if the nation's government and
population take no action to mitigate the threat.
"You're
talking about 2.2 million deaths, 2.2 million people from this," the
president said. "And so, if we can hold that down, as we're saying, to
100,000—that's a horrible number—maybe even less, but to 100,000, so we have
between 100- and 200,000, we all together have done a very good job."
Trump has decided to ignore the advice of his chief pandemic advisor |
Critics condemned Trump's remarks as remarkably cruel and callous, particularly coming from someone who has repeatedly downplayed the threat of the virus—at one point suggesting it was a "new hoax" perpetrated by the Democratic Party—and urged Americans to get back to work despite warnings from medical professionals.
"There
really are no words for this level of insensitivity and inhumanity. A serial
killer would be jealous," said Charles Idelson of National Nurses
United in response to Trump's comments.
Trump announced Sunday that the White House is
extending federal social distancing guidelines to at least April 30, a retreat from the president's insistence last week that the country
could be "rarin' to go" by Easter—April 12.
Noting
the president's rapidly shifting goalposts, CNN reporter Daniel
Dale tweeted late Sunday, "Trump has come
a long way from the 15-cases-but-we're-going-down-to-zero."