“Well, you know that we have one of the lowest mortality rates anywhere,” President Donald Trump, 74, falsely said on July 13. He made this claim after a reporter asked him if he was concerned about a resurgence of the COVID-19 coronavirus, the disease that has killed more than 135,000 Americans and infected more than 3.3 million. After saying that 135,000 dead is a sign of a “low mortality rate,” Trump then attacked former President Barack Obama and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. “If you know Biden and Obama stopped their testing– they just stopped it,” he said, per Yahoo! News. “You probably know that. I’m sure you don’t want to report it.”
“But they stopped testing,” said Trump. “Right in the middle, they just want, no more testing, and on a much lesser problem than the problem that we have, obviously, with respect to– this is the worst thing that’s happened since probably 1917. This is a very bad– all over the world. It’s 188 countries right now.” This bizarre claim, that Obama and Biden — who finished their Presidential/Vice-Presidential terms in Jan. 2017 — somehow didn’t test for COVID-19 (which is named because it was discovered in 2019) left many scratching their head.
Yes Obama and Biden stopped Covid-19 testing in 2016, 3 years before the virus 🦠 first appeared on the planet. What’s next? Will Trump blame Obama and Biden for not doing enough to stop the Holocaust in WWll? Vote this narcissistic murderer out in Nov. pic.twitter.com/VMS029j2Hm
— REDSOX⚾️ (@FiskFoulPole) July 13, 2020
“That awkward moment when Trump tries to blame Obama and Biden for ‘not testing’ but the coronavirus hit the US in 2020.. maybe those dementia rumours really are true,” one person on Twitter said. “Yes, Obama and Biden stopped Covid-19 testing in 2016, 3 years before the virus Microbe first appeared on the planet. What’s next? Will Trump blame Obama and Biden for not doing enough to stop the Holocaust in WWll? Vote this narcissistic murderer out in Nov.” “Poor, Pathetic Trump tryna blame Obama for testing failures.”
Trump’s current argument is that BIDEN and OBAMA stopped testing for covid-19.
They left office 3 years before covid-19 existed.
— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) July 14, 2020
Poor, Pathetic Trump tryna blame Obama for testing failures.
— Robert Ellingsworth (@BY1959) July 13, 2020
It’s possible that Trump was regurgitating something he saw on either Fox News. Five days ago, the conservative news organization published a story, citing a ten-year-old report by CBS News, about how the Obama administration halted testing during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009. Trump has also called the Obama response to H1N1 a “disaster.” One could interpret these attacks as a way to discredit Trump’s presidential challenger (while also discrediting any criticism of his bumbling COVID-19 response.) As for this ‘disaster?” The Washington Post’s fact-checker department looked at the data and rated Trump’s claims as false, giving them a rating of four Pinnichos.
The President of the United States is claiming the previous administration "stopped their testing" for a disease which literally did not exist during President Obama's tenure. This after President Trump publicly called fo slowing testing and denies the pandemic's scale is growing https://t.co/jclcy2Hjwl
— Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (@CongressmanRaja) July 13, 2020
This is not the first time that Trump and his White House have falsely claimed that the United States has the lowest novel coronavirus mortality rate. The U.S. actually has the 9th worst mortality rate in the world, according to ABC News, with 39.82 deaths per 100,000 people. The U.S. is on a shortlist of “countries that have the most coronavirus deaths proportional to both its total population and to its confirmed cases,” per ABC News. It also is the country with the greatest number of overall deaths for COVID-19.