President Donald Trump is grieving for the deaths of thousands of COVID-19 victims as the numbers went over 100,000 nationally Wednesday night, and his heart goes out to their families, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Thursday.
"The president last week lowered the flag to half-staff in anticipation of this number coming up," she said on Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "(He) said that even one death too many and he grieves for the loss of life."
However, McEnany added, because of Trump's actions, "we stayed far below that 2.2 million estimate that was initially out there. The extraordinary effort of the administration and the work of the American people to help keep this month from being much worse than it could have been."
Mortality numbers are coming down and at this point "are as low as they were two months ago," and that is a testament to the American people for following Trump's encouragement for them to socially distance, wash their hands, and observe stay-at-home orders.
"We are at a better place today as we look to reopen the country and the president should be credited for making the hard choice to shut down the economy and now the right choice to reopen the country," she said.
There also have been some governors who have taken action to move forward and who have done so safely, and Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House Coronavirus Task Force has said there has not been a correlation between reopening states and numbers of coronavirus spiking again, said McEnany.
"We see that data-driven outcomes of the states have been positive, and it has put pressure on some other states to reopen because there are consequences for staying shut down," said McEnany. "Keeping the country shut down has added consequences so we are encouraged to see that reopening is going well in so many parts of the country."
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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