‘He turns everything into what he thinks is a political benefit for himself, and he’s actually imploding in the process…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Presidential candidate Joe Biden said President Donald Trump should “just be quiet” and let his health officials handle the coronavirus outbreak.
“I wish he would just be quiet, I really mean it,” Biden said during an interview with MSNBC Monday night. “That’s an awful thing to say about a president, but be quiet, just let the experts speak and acknowledge whatever they suggest to him is what we should be doing.”
In an exclusive interview with @Lawrence, former Vice President @JoeBiden reacts to Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus and the market turmoil. Watch the full interview Monday at 10pm ET on @MSNBC. pic.twitter.com/IUOiUWPDKW
— The Last Word (@TheLastWord) March 9, 2020
Biden also claimed Trump isn’t taking the coronavirus seriously because he doesn’t want the economy to crash. The stock market likely would have dropped with or without Trump’s help, but it “wouldn’t collapse,” Biden added.
“I think there’s no confidence in the president in anything he says or does,” Biden said. “He turns everything into what he thinks is a political benefit for himself, and he’s actually imploding in the process. But there’s a lot of innocent bystanders being badly hurt.”
While the closures of global markets—particularly those in China—has caused the market to fluctuate dramatically due to the health concerns, the spread has yet to live up to its media hype.
There currently are around 120 confirmed cases in the U.S.—more than two-thirds of which were travel-related—with another 500-plus cases under investigation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There have been 25 U.S. deaths reported from the virus.
Nonetheless, it invited comparisons to several outbreak fears during the Obama administration, particularly the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
Administration officials at the time, likewise, downplayed as a containable threat, despite its symptoms—and mortality rate—being far more alarming. While the lower range of Ebola’s death rate was estimated to be around 50 percent, the coronavirus’s rate is estimated at 2.1 percent.
The Obama administration also faced a multitude of other health crises, including 2009’s swine flu and the mosquito-borne West Nile and Zika viruses, with varying transmission and mortality rates but similarly downplayed concerns.
Trump has accused the Democrats of trying to intentionally stoke panic, assuring Americans that despite the virus’s spread, “nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on.”
The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, “The risk is low to the average American.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020
“So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year,” Trump tweeted. “At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!”
Liberty Headlines’ Ben Sellers contributed to this report.