(CNN) — President Donald Trump said the United States’ staggering death toll from coronavirus “is what it is” in a new interview, again praising his administration’s response despite a toll that far outpaces that of any other nation.
When confronted about the pandemic during an interview with Axios that aired Monday night on HBO, the president grew defensive and appeared frustrated by Jonathan Swan’s questions.
At one point, Swan said: “I’ve gone to your rallies. I’ve talked to your people. They love you, they listen to you. … And so when they hear you say, ‘Everything’s under control. Don’t worry about wearing masks,’ I mean, these are people — many of them are older people …”
“Well, what’s your definition of control?” Trump replied. “I think it’s under control.”
“How? A thousand Americans are dying a day,” Swan said.
“They are dying. That’s true. And you — it is what it is,” Trump said emphatically. “But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it.”
When pressed on the US death toll, Trump repeatedly pointed to the proportion of deaths to confirmed coronavirus cases, rather than the proportion of deaths to the population. The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population but around 25% of global deaths from COVID-19.
“Well, right here, United States is lowest in numerous categories. We’re lower than the world, we’re lower than Europe,” Trump said as he sorted through pages of charts, handing one to Swan.
“Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad,” Swan said.
“You can’t do that. You have to go by the cases, the cases of death,” Trump argued.
“It’s surely a relevant statistic to say if the U.S. has X population and X percentage of death of that population, versus South Korea,” Swan later said.
Trump again replied: “No, because you have to go by the cases.”
Officials on the White House coronavirus task force have been warning that the pandemic is worsening in the US. On Sunday, Dr. Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the group, said that the U.S. is in a new phase of the pandemic where the virus “is extraordinarily widespread.” Trump replied with a tweet Monday calling Birx “pathetic.”
More than 155,000 Americans are known to have died from the virus, and the death toll is projected to reach 173,000 by August 22, according to a new composite forecast from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s an average of almost 1,000 US deaths every day for the next three weeks.
The-CNN-Wire
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