President Trump got into a heated exchange with Axios reporter Jonathan Swan, pulling out several papers to make his case about the severity of the coronavirus in the United States after the journalist pressed him about COVID-19 death rates.
“The figure I look at is death. And death is going up now. That’s 1,000 a day,” Swan said in an interview that first aired Monday evening, prompting Trump to pull out several charts.
“Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad, much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.,” Swan said.
“You can’t do that,” rebutted Trump.
“Why can’t I do that?” Swan replied.
“You have to go by the cases,” Trump insisted, saying it’s a more accurate analysis to determine who recovers from the coronavirus after contracting the illness. The president also echoed an earlier point he has made about the degree of coronavirus testing in the U.S. affecting the overall case number.
“One thousand Americans are dying a day. But I understand on cases, it’s different,” Swan said.
“No, but you’re not reporting it correctly, Jonathan,” Trump responded, to which Swan disagreed.
