Trump Continues to Downplay COVID-19 & Underestimate Biden in Wallace Interview

The two things which struck me most about Chris Wallace's interview with President Trump on Fox News Sunday was his persistence in downplaying the spread of COVID-19 in the United States and his underestimation of Joe Biden.

As he has for some time, President Trump attributed the high number of COVID cases to the "We do more testing than anybody else" mantra. When Wallace pointed out the infection rate outpaced the increase in testing capacity, Trump minimized the affects of COVID-19. "Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day. They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test," said Trump, "Many of them -- don't forget, I guess it's like 99.7 percent, people are going to get better and in many cases they're going to get better very quickly."

No, Mr. President, people do not heal from COVID in a day. Nor are 99.7% of the people who have COVID-19 going to recover quickly.

Earlier in the interview, Trump claimed we have the world's lowest mortality rate with COVID-19. As of this writing, there are nearly 3.7 million COVID-19 cases in the U.S. (3,698,161) and nearly 140,000 deaths (139,659). That's a mortality rate of 3.8%. We're nowhere near the lowest mortality rate. Mind you when the WHO predicted the rate would be 3.4% in early March, Trump called it "a false number" and predicted the mortality rate would be "way under 1%."

Trump also denied his administration was gaslighting Dr. Anthony Fauci and then proceeded to dump more lighter fluid on him by reiterating White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro's criticisms and describing Fauci as "a bit of an alarmist". Most egregiously he claimed Dr. Fauci opposed his China travel ban. Trump told Wallace, "Dr. Fauci said, “Don’t ban China. Don’t ban China.” I did. He then admitted that I was right."

This is rubbish. President Trump made a similar claim in an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business News back in May. In point of fact, Fauci, Dr. Redfield of the CDC and HHS Secretary Alex Azar were all recommending travel restrictions in late January.

Then there's this attempt to further throw Dr. Redfield under the bus. Wallace cited Redfield's recent Congressional testimony that the Fall of 2020 and Winter of 2021 would present "probably going to be one of the most difficult times that we’ve experienced in American public health." Trump replied:

I don't know and I don't think he knows. I don't think anybody knows with this. This is a very tricky deal. Everybody thought this summer it would go away and it would come back in the fall. Well, when the summer came, they used to say the heat -- the heat was good for it and it really knocks it out, remember? And then it might come back in the fall. So they got that one wrong.

Except that it was Trump who got it wrong. As he would tell several state Governors in mid-March, “The virus that we’re talking about having to do, a lot of people think that goes away in April, with the heat, as the heat comes in, typically that will go away in April.”

The fact is Trump has not inspired confidence when it comes to responding to COVID-19 in the United States and nothing he said today changes this one iota. All of this only helps Joe Biden.

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Despite his deficit to Biden in the polls, Trump insists on underestimating him as have sons Donald, Jr. and Eric:

Biden can't put two sentences together. They wheel him out. He goes up -- he repeats -- they ask him questions. He reads a teleprompter and then he goes back into his basement. You tell me the American people want to have that in an age where we're in trouble with other nations that are looking to do numbers on us.

I think Russia is looking to do a number on us. Last I checked they paid the Taliban bounties to kill our soldiers under Trump's watch - something Wallace did not raise in the interview and ought to have. But in raising Biden's cognitive abilities, Trump only succeeds in drawing attention to his own shortcomings especially when he brags about passing a cognitive test at Walter Reed. Trump later said of Biden, "Joe doesn't know he's alive, OK? He doesn't know he's alive." 

Well, let Trump keep believing that nonsense. Because by the end of the first debate on September 29th, Trump won't know what hit him after Biden has knocked him on his ass. While Trump questions Biden for hiding out in his basement, Biden is doing his homework by reading intelligence briefings with which Trump simply cannot be bothered. By the end of the first debate any doubt Trump might cast on Biden's cognitive abilities will have been completely removed all the while authoring his own demise with a little help from Sarah Cooper and The Lincoln Project.