Donald Trump was the President of the United States when the pandemic broke out last spring, and received much criticism for his corona handling.
During a press conference in April last year, Trump suggested that people could inject disinfectants against the coronavirus. The statement was met with strong reactions, and later Trump claimed that the proposal was sarcastic.
WATCH VIDEO: Trump on injecting disinfectant: – It was sarcasm
– Solid mistake
Just over six months later, Trump ran for president again, but lost in favor of Joe Biden. Trump has long refused to acknowledge the defeat.
Svein Melby, a senior researcher at the Department of Defense Studies, believes Trump would have been re-elected president if he had handled the pandemic better.
– Trump committed a serious political mistake. Had he taken a strong lead in the fight against the corona, and used it to gain even more power, he would probably have been re-elected with a fairly solid margin in the election last autumn, Melby says to VG.
– “Out of touch” with reality
Sigrid Rege Gårdsvoll, commentator for the website Amerikanskpolitikk.no, says that it was Trump’s corona handling that won the election for Joe Biden.
– Trump would hardly have had to deal with the pandemic differently if he had only spoken in a different way. Donald Trump’s opponents have always portrayed him as “out of touch” with reality. For many, it was probably extra real during the corona, says Gårdsvoll to VG.
In the United States, more than 36 million cases of coronavirus infection have been registered, and 631,000 corona-related deaths have been registered, according to Worldometer.
About half of the US population is fully vaccinated.
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