President Trump on Tuesday denied understating the threat of the disease and said he ‘up-played coronavirus action’ when asked tough questions from uncommitted voters and ABC News host George Stephanopoulos during the town hall meeting.
One audience member asked why he “downplayed a pandemic that is known to disproportionately harm low-income families and minority communities.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t downplay it. I actually, in many ways, I up-played it, in terms of action. My action was very strong,” the Republican president, who is seeking reelection on Nov. 3, said.
During the town hall meeting, Mr Trump argued his decision to impose travel bans on China and Europe had saved thousands, if not millions, of lives.
He repeated a claim he made early on in the pandemic that the virus would disappear on its own.
The president also said a vaccine against the virus could be three or four weeks away, despite cautionary notes sounded by some US public health officials about that accelerated timeline.
Trump, speaking at a town hall hosted by ABC News in Philadelphia, defended his handling of the coronavirus crisis, and said a vaccine could be ready for distribution before the US presidential election on Nov. 3.
“We’re very close to having a vaccine,” he said. “If you want to know the truth, the previous administration would have taken perhaps years to have a vaccine because of the FDA and all the approvals. And we’re within weeks of getting it… Could be three weeks, four weeks.”
Trump also provoked mockery on Twitter when he spoke about “herd mentality” instead of “herd immunity,” a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that occurs when enough people have become immune through vaccination or previous infections.
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