President Trump's estimation of the U.S.'s eventual coronavirus death toll keeps growing, and so far, he maintains the country has made the right choices to mitigate it.
On Friday, Trump spoke at a meeting with Republican lawmakers about the growing coronavirus death toll, saying "so many people have died" but "that's the one thing we can't do anything about, unfortunately." "What I can say is if we did it a different way," perhaps by letting people go about their normal lives in hopes of building up herd immunity to COVID-19, "we would've been talking about numbers that would've been unsustainable," Trump continued. The ultimate death toll, Trump now posits, is "95,000 people" or "more than that."
That's one of the highest numbers of potential coronavirus deaths Trump has estimated so far. He suggested a few weeks ago that anywhere from 50-60,000 Americans would ultimately die, but those numbers were quickly surpassed, with 77,000 deaths reported as of Friday.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Trump boosts gas cars in fuel economy rollbackspeed read Watering down fuel efficiency standards is another blow to former President Biden’s effort to boost electric vehicles
-
Hegseth’s Signal chat put troops in peril, probe findsSpeed Read The defense secretary risked the lives of military personnel and violated Pentagon rules, says new report
-
Texas is trying to become America’s next financial hubIn the Spotlight The Lone Star State could soon have three major stock exchanges
-
Trump boosts gas cars in fuel economy rollback
speed read Watering down fuel efficiency standards is another blow to former President Biden’s effort to boost electric vehicles
-
Hegseth’s Signal chat put troops in peril, probe finds
Speed Read The defense secretary risked the lives of military personnel and violated Pentagon rules, says new report
-
Trump pardons Texas Democratic congressmanspeed read Rep. Henry Cuellar was charged with accepting foreign bribes tied to Azerbaijan and Mexico
-
GOP wins tight House race in red Tennessee districtSpeed Read Republicans maintained their advantage in the House
-
Trump targets ‘garbage’ Somalis ahead of ICE raidsSpeed Read The Department of Homeland Security will launch an immigration operation targeting Somali immigrants in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area
-
Hegseth blames ‘fog of war’ for potential war crimespeed read ‘I did not personally see survivors,’ Hegseth said at a Cabinet meeting
-
Canada joins EU’s $170B SAFE defense fundspeed read This makes it the first non-European Union country in the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) initiative
-
Appeals court disqualifies US Attorney Alina HabbaSpeed Read The former personal attorney to President Donald Trump has been unlawfully serving as US attorney for New Jersey, the ruling says
