Trump has made coronavirus crisis 'all about him', Piers Morgan slams POTUS' 'heartless' response to death toll
Piers Morgan slammed Donald Trump after his disastrous interview with HBO where he repeatedly tried to downplay the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and said the president has "made the crisis all about him."
Trump had appeared on HBO's AXIOS for a talk with Jonathan Swan and opened up about a variety of issues, including Covid-19, Ghislaine Maxwell, and late civil rights activist Congressman John Lewis, and has caught flak on social media for the same.
It was his attempts to play down the impact of the coronavirus on the country that irked most, including Swan. Trump claimed that there were 188 countries that are "suffering proportionately far greater" than the U.S. before naming Spain and Russia and producing a collection of graphics.
"Look at some of these charts," he said. "This one, right here, the United States is lowest…in numerous categories…lower than the world." Swan, confused, asked, "In what?" prompting the president to hand over the graphics.
After Swan studied it for a short while, he quipped, "Oh, you're doing death as a proportion of cases. I'm talking about death as a proportion of population."
It left Trump dumbstruck and stuttering for a response. Eventually, he told Swan, "You can't do that! You have to go by the cases. We're last, meaning we're first!" He also said "there are those that say you can test too much" and told Swan to "just read the manuals" and "read the books" when questioned about his sources.
Writing an op-ed for the Daily Mail, Morgan said it was a "stunning exchange" that proved Trump "wishes America did less testing so they didn't have so many cases because it makes HIM look bad."
When Swan pointed out that "a thousand people are dying a day" in the country, Trump replied, "They are dying. It's true. It is what it is."
"'It is what it is' -- that was the President's staggering response to the ongoing horrific slaughter of Americans by a deadly virus," Pierce wrote, incredulously. "No empathy, no apology, no expression of sorrow. Just a heartless, dismissive shrug. The problem for Trump in this crisis is that the stats don't lie like he does."
Morgan went on to highlight how Trump would declare anything he did not like as "fake news" but it no longer worked because "he is being exposed by the cold, hard reality of data-backed truth."
"The World Health Organisation reports today there have been 18,100,204 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the world, and 690,257 deaths," the 'Good Morning Britain' host said. "Of these, America has had 4,629,459 cases, which is 25% of the global total, and 154,226 deaths which is 22% of the global total. Yet it has just 4.2% of the world's population. So whichever way you look at the numbers, the United States is doing catastrophically badly."
Morgan suggested that Trump was going on this campaign of misinformation because he knows that if he admits how bad the outlook is, he will lose the upcoming presidential elections.
"So, he's now reduced to lying, obfuscating, deflecting, and anything else he can think of to avoid being held accountable for what has happened on his watch," Morgan said, before adding, "Trump's made the crisis all about him, not the American people.