In a new interview, President Donald Trump appears visibly flustered when pressed on the subject of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the US and his recent claims regarding that mail-in voting in fraudulent.
In the interview which was broadcast by HBO this week and conducted by Axios’s national political correspondent, Jonathan Swan.
During the interview, Trump claimed that his administration was currently doing an “incredible job” at responding to the coronavirus pandemic.
Discussing the pandemic, Trump said: “This has never happened before. Nineteen seventeen, but it was totally different, it was the flu in that case. If you watch the fake news on television, they don’t even talk about it, but there are 188 other countries right now that are suffering. Some, proportionately, far greater than we are.”
Throughout the coronavirus, Trump has frequently made reference to the “1917 pandemic”, however, the outbreak happened in 1918 into 1919.
When asked about the death toll from coronavirus so far in the US, of almost 155,000 dead, Trump said: “It is what it is.”
In one particularly interesting part of the interview, Trump held up several pieces of paper with graphs and charts on them that he referred to as he attempted to discuss how the US figures compared internationally.
Trump said: “Right here, United States is lowest in numerous categories. We’re lower than the world. Lower than Europe.”
Swan responded: “In what?”
At this point in the interview, it is apparent that Trump is talking about the number of deaths as a proportion of cases. Swan replies: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of the population. That’s where the US is really bad. Much worse than Germany, South Korea.”
Trump then says: “You can’t do that.”
Watch the full interview below:
