President Donald Trump, having a call with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday night, has vowed to stop blaming China for the global coronavirus pandemic, but he did question the validity of their case and death totals.
"No. 1, you don't know what the numbers for China," Trump told reporters during the White House coronavirus task force daily briefing Thursday.
"China tells you numbers," he continued, adding, "I am sure you are not able to tell what China is testing or not testing."
Vice President Mike Pence, leader of the task force, has announced the U.S. has conducted more than 552,000 tests. Data shows the U.S. has the most confirmed cases in the world now at 83,097, according to Worldometer, which tallies from Johns Hopkins University and recent media reports.
Also, Trump has vowed to stop calling COVID-19 the "Chinese virus," but he did repeat the term multiple times Thursday and said no one from China has called on the U.S. to stop the blaming rhetoric.
"He never asked me to calm it down," Trump said of Xi. "Somebody might have spoken to somebody but nobody spoke to me about it. I talk about the Chinese virus. I mean it.
"All of these diseases come with a name from the location. It was the Chinese virus."
Trump pointed at the reports that China has blamed U.S. soldiers for bringing the coronavirus to China as the reason he started calling it the "Chinese virus."
"They made a statement that our soldiers brought it into China," Trump said. "So, it came from China."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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