Status: 11.09.2020 11:38 a.m.
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The legendary British Prime Minister Churchill during the Second World War – US President Trump sees his Corona policy in this tradition. And justifies that he played down dangers.
US President Donald Trump has rejected the criticism of his relativizing statements of the past months about the corona virus with a historical comparison. He behaved similarly to the British government in World War II. “That’s what I did,” Trump said in relation to his handling of the corona pandemic.
Trump said in interviews with investigative journalist Bob Woodward in March that he had deliberately downplayed the danger posed by the virus. Corresponding passages and tape recordings were published by the US media on Wednesday. Trump admitted this and then said in his defense that he did not want to spread panic.
Trump: Journalist should have gone public right away
Now the president is counter-attacking the journalist. If Woodward saw his March statements as problematic, he should have gone public with them immediately instead of waiting months, Trump said. At an election rally in Freeland, Michigan, he called the Pulitzer Prize winner a “crank” in front of cheering supporters. On the other hand, he compared himself and his Corona policy with Churchill:
When Hitler bombed London, Churchill, a great leader, often went to a rooftop in London and spoke. (…) And he always spoke with serenity. He said we need to be calm. (…) We did it right and we did a job like no one else.
“The best work of all countries”
It is said that Churchill observed the Nazi bombing raids on London from a rooftop, but did not make any speeches. In June 1945 – after the end of the war – he spoke during the election campaign on a canopy, as was captured in photos.
Trump’s challenger in the White House race, Democrat Joe Biden, accused the Republican on Wednesday of lying to the American people and of being responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of US citizens from the corona virus. Trump, on the other hand, again claimed that the US had the pandemic under better control than most other countries in the world.
His administration has done “the best job of all countries,” said Trump. In the EU, on the other hand, there are outbreaks “like never before seen”. The numbers in Italy, France and Spain are “on a level far worse than the numbers here.”
35,000 new cases in the US, 1,500 in Italy
However, this statement is not true. In fact, the USA as well as Italy, France and Spain are among the countries that are particularly badly affected by Corona worldwide. However, the world’s highest numbers of infections are clearly recorded in the USA, where there have so far been around 6.4 million confirmed corona cases – with a population of 329 million. An average of around 35,000 new infections are currently reported there every day.
In Italy – to take an example of Trump’s from Europe – there are 283,000 registered cases with a good 60 million inhabitants and currently an average of around 1500 new infections per day.
New record in France
Europe was hit by the pandemic much earlier than the USA. It had its peak here in spring, in the USA it wasn’t until summer. After the number of new infections fell sharply in almost all European countries in the summer, it is now increasing again – after the protective measures have been relaxed – but is below that of spring.
France is an exception among the large EU countries. According to the AFP news agency, 9843 new cases of Covid-19 were recorded on Thursday – more than ever since the outbreak of the pandemic.
Editor’s note: In the original version of this text, we made a false reference to the 1939 British “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster. Although this was printed millions of times during the Second World War, it was never published and only became known to the public in 2000.
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