WASHINGTON — Donald Trump Jr. falsely claimed Thursday that Covid-19 deaths have dwindled to "almost nothing," despite there being around 1,000 reported in the United States the same day.
In an interview on Fox News' “The Ingraham Angle," the president's son said that medical experts who have been talking about a surge in cases are "truly morons."
“I went through the CDC data because I kept hearing about new infections, but I was like, 'Well, why aren't they talking about deaths?'" Trump Jr. said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Oh, oh, because the number is almost nothing. Because we've gotten control of this thing, we understand how it works. They have the therapeutics to be able to deal with this."
"It's gone to almost nothing," he repeated, adding that the U.S. is "outperforming Europe in a positive way."
He mocked Democrats who have advocated in favor of certain restrictions. "Why don't we shut down for 10 or 15 years?" said Trump Jr., who said that children can learn on their iPhones.
His comments came on the same day that the U.S. reported record-breaking new Covid-19 infections, with nearly 90,000 positive cases, according to the Johns Hopkins’ Coronavirus Resource Center. Nearly 1,000 people in the U.S. also died of the virus Thursday.
CORRECTION: (Oct. 30, 2020, 9:01 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated what Donald Trump Jr. was referring to in a quote. He said the number of Covid-19 deaths was “almost nothing,” not the number of Covid-19 infections.
