Trump blames blue states for high U.S. COVID-19 death toll

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

published 16 September 2020

President Trump on Wednesday evening defended his response to the coronavirus pandemic by saying the country's COVID-19 death rate would be low if "you take the blue states out."

States run by Democratic governors have had "tremendous death rates," Trump proclaimed during a press conference at the White House. "If you take the blue states out, we're at a level that I don't think anybody in the world would be at. We're really at a very low level."

Of the 15 states with the highest COVID-19 death tolls, eight are under Democratic leadership, while seven are led by Republicans, The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler reports. Additionally, when the deaths are sorted per one million people, 10 of the top 20 states are run by Democrats and 10 are run by Republicans. In the United States, nearly 6.6 million COVID-19 cases have been reported, and at least 193,000 people have died of the virus.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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