Trump Obsesses Over Flu Deaths, Attacks Cuomo in Softball Fox News Chat [View all]
Source: daily beast
The president insisted on downplaying the coronavirus by comparing it to the seasonal flu, and Fox’s hosts and medical experts acted
more as sycophants than interlocutors.
Updated Mar. 24, 2020 4:42PM ET / Published Mar. 24, 2020 1:56PM ET
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“I watched Governor Cuomo and he was very nice,” the president said of the New York governor’s press conference, which preceded the Fox News town hall, before attacking Cuomo for “complaining” about receiving only 3,000 ventilators from the Federal Emergency Management Agency despite needing, in his estimation, at least 30,000 of the devices.
“He had a choice. He had a chance,” the president continued. “He refused to order 15,000 ventilators,” Trump said, pulling out a printout of an article from far-right blog The Gateway Pundit and paraphrasing the headline: “It says that he didn’t buy the ventilators in 2015 for a pandemic, established death panels and lotteries instead.”
“I’m not blaming him or anything else,” Trump then pivoted, “but he shouldn’t be talking about us. He’s supposed to be buying his own ventilators. We are going to help.” He suggested Cuomo has not been grateful enough for the president’s help: “We are working very, very hard for the people of New York. We are working a lot with him. Then I watch him on this show complaining.”
Throughout the chat with Fox News hosts Bill Hemmer and Harris Faulkner, Trump repeatedly pivoted to an earlier talking point about the seasonal flu being just as bad or worse than COVID-19. Trump obsessively referenced the annual death count from influenza.
“We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu. We don’t turn the country off. Every year. When I heard the number—you know, we averaged 37,000 people a year. Can you believe that?” the president grumbled at one point. “This year we are having a bad flu season.”
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Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-obsesses-over-flu-deaths-attacks-cuomo-in-softball-fox-news-chat?ref=home
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