Harry Shannon
As the number of deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. climbed above the total in Italy to become the highest in the world, Donald Trump claimed: ‘Thanks to me, we’re number one.’
In a rambling press conference, Trump said: ‘Several other countries have tried to beat us, but they haven’t succeeded. Countries like Italy and Spain got a head start, but we’ve overtaken them. My good friends Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Boris Johnson in the U.K. have tried to compete, but Americans are the best in the world at choosing freedom over the fake warnings of government officials. In fact, Boris even tried to boost the British numbers by contracting coronavirus himself, but he’s a failure, he failed to die.’
Trump added: ‘My appointees have undercounted many deaths from coronavirus, making it harder for us to clinch the top spot. … The Deep State has worked so hard, so hard, to cut the numbers. And the health care workers – as you know they complain they don’t have so-called protective equipment but what happened to good old American toughness? They’re weak, too weak.’
Trump also castigated state governors, saying: ‘They have shut down much of the economy in their states, even the Republican ones. If they hadn’t, our numbers would have been tremendous, the biggest numbers ever in the whole history of the world. Without all these actions, we’d have left other countries in the dust. And I really mean dust, as in “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust”.’