President Donald Trump Monday claimed that the federal government has done a "helluva job" to fight the spread of coronavirus and has accomplished "far more" than if anyone else was president, particularly Joe Biden.
"If 'Sleepy Joe' was president, he wouldn't even know what's going on, you know that," Trump said during a morning interview on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "Everybody knows that. We have taken this thing and done a helluva job."
The president added that "we're thinking" that the spike, or highest point, in deaths nationally will happen at around Easter.
"That's going to be the highest point, we think, and then it's going to start coming down from there," said Trump. "That will be a day of celebration, and we want to do it right . . . April 30 is the day where we can see some real progress and we expect to see that and then by a little short of June, maybe June 1, we think it's a terrible thing to say, but we think the deaths will be at a very low number."
He also insisted that the administration has a "great relationship" with the nation's governors, "because of what we're doing."
"We started off with an empty shelf," said the president. "We built something really good now."
"This is a tough deal, but it's incredible today we're opening up a hospital, 2,900 beds in New York City, and we in addition to that we're doing four medical centers in New York City, we're doing New Jersey, we're doing Louisiana, we're doing Florida," said Trump. "We have all over the country we're doing things, it's incredible what's happened with the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA."
Monday was to have been the 15th day of Trump's 15 days to slow the spread of coronavirus, but on Sunday, the president said the slowdown guidelines were to be extended to April 30, just a week after saying he wanted the economy to start reopening by Easter Sunday.
Trump said the decision came after listening to his task force's experts, Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx.
"If we just kept the business as usual, didn't do anything to stop it or impede it, could have been 2.2 million people could have died," said Trump. "It would have been between 1.6 they say and then they showed you the numbers, 1.6 and 2.2 million people it could have been more than that...we want to do something where we have the least death and that's what we're doing and the people in this country have been incredible with social distancing and everything else they're doing."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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