A top official at the World Health Organization said President Trump’s news conference on the American response to the COVID-19 virus made little sense.
“I found most of what he said a little incoherent,” Ezekiel Emanuel, special adviser to the director-general of the World Health Organization, said Wednesday on MSNBC’s Hardball. “You know, [Trump’s] a guy that admitted that he’s surprised that 25,000 to 69,000 people each year die of the flu. That just tells you how little he actually knows about public health and about the health of the American public.”
Emanuel said Trump’s news conference revealed how “ignorant” he is about the global outbreak that has infected tens of thousands and led to the deaths of more than 2,000 people around the world.
There have been 60 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States so far.
“I found most of what he said incoherent.”
— Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel on Trump’s press conference regarding the coronavirus. #Hardball pic.twitter.com/HIHxYLS1E5
— Hardball (@hardball) February 27, 2020
At the White House on Wednesday, Trump announced that he appointed Vice President Mike Pence to lead the U.S. response to the spread of the virus, which the WHO has declared a global health emergency.
“Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low,” Trump said.
The president asked Congress for $2.5 billion in funding to fight the spread of the virus, a request Democrats panned as being late and “inadequate.”
“Hopefully, we can make up for the loss of time, but it’ll have to have professionals in place, the resources that are adequate — and not using scare tactics about people coming back to our country,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Trump assured the American people his administration has the situation under control.
“We’ll spend whatever is appropriate. Hopefully, we won’t have to spend so much because we really think that we’ve done a great job in keeping it down to a minimum,” Trump said. “It is what it is. We’re ready for it. We’re really prepared. We have, as I said, we have the greatest people in the world. We’re very ready for it.”
