With cases of thecoronaviruson the rise across both the United States and around the world,President Donald Trumphas accused Democrats of politicizing the outbreak in an attempt to hurt him politically.
On Saturday, the first coronavirus-related death in the U.S. was reported after the CDC confirmed on Friday that public health authorities in California, Oregon and Washington foundfour new presumptive cases of coronavirusfrom an unknown origin. However, the president, who said 22 people in the U.S. have coronavirus during a Saturday press conference, called the coronavirus the Democrats’ “new hoax” on Friday.
“The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. They’re politicizing it,” Trump said during a campaign rally in South Carolina, according toPolitico. “One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That did not work out too well. They could not do it. They tried the impeachment hoax.”
“Anything that they can use to try to hurt Trump, they will,” he said before accusing them of trying “to take a pandemic and seemingly hope that it comes here, and kills millions of people so that they could end Donald Trump’s streak of winning.”
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“Some of the stuff he says is so bizarre that you can laugh at it,” Biden told reporters in South Carolina, ahead of the state’s primary election on Saturday, according to Politico. “The president of the United States says it’s a hoax? It’s hard to believe. Even for him, it’s hard to believe.”
“Look, this is a serious, serious, serious problem. It’s able to be solved, but it requires us to be absolutely levelheaded and let the scientists have the lead in all of this,” Biden added. “But for him to stop and start talking about being a hoax is absolutely dangerous. It’s just not a decent way to act.”
Many critics of the president, including Rep.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, haveslammed the Trump administration’s effortsto combat the coronavirus, which has included naming Vice President Mike Pence tolead the federal government’s response— with many pointing out that while Pence was the governor of Indiana, hereacted slowly to an HIV outbreak, which reportedly became the state’sworst ever.
“It is utterly irresponsible to put him in charge of US coronavirus response as the world sits on the cusp of a pandemic,” Ocasio-Cortez, 30, tweeted after the news was announced on Wednesday. “This decision could cost people their lives. Pence’s past decisions already have.”
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Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned Americans “toprepare for a significant disruption” as it’s only a matter of time before the outbreak spreads to the United States, Trump has insisted that his administration has everything under control.
“CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus,” he wrote on Twitter on Tuesday,misspelling the name of the disease in a subsequent message.
Two additional U.S. cases of coronavirus from an unknown origin were reported on Friday, amid concerns that the disease is now spreading in the countrythrough community transmission.
The announcement came aftertwo patients in Californiabecame the first two cases in the U.S. of coronavirus in patients whohad not recently traveled abroad.
To prevent the spread of the virus, the CDC encourages maintaining basic forms of hygiene including careful hand washing, avoiding touching the face, moving away from people who are coughing or sneezing and staying home at signs of illness.
source: people.com
