Skip to main content
FactsPress Release

Trump Again Moves the Goalposts on How Many Lives Will Be Lost Due to Coronavirus

By May 14, 2020May 19th, 2020No Comments

 

In an interview this morning on Fox Business, President Trump once again revised the number of people he expects to die due to the coronavirus as his administration approaches its fifth month of failing to manage the virus’s spread. Since February, Trump has moved the goalposts from “just one or two people” in February, to 60,000 and then 70,000 in April, and in May from 90,000 to “over 100,000” deaths.

Trump on May 14, 2020: “We’re gonna lose over a hundred thousand perhaps in this country.”

Trump on May 3, 2020: “I used to say 65,000 — […] And now I’m saying 80 or 90, and it goes up and it goes up rapidly.  But it’s still going to be, no matter how you look at it, at the very lower end of the plane, if we did the shutdown.”

Trump On April 27, 2020: “So, yeah, we’ve lost a lot of people. But if you look at what original projections were — 2.2 million — we’re probably heading to 60,000, 70,000.” 

Trump On April 19, 2020: “But we would have had millions of deaths instead of — it looks like we’ll be at about a 60,000 mark, which is 40,000 less than the lowest number thought of.”

Trump On April 17, 2020: “But we did a lot of work, and the people of this country were incredible, I have to say. And I think we’re heading to the other category, and that would be if we did work and if it was successful, they had between 100,000 and 220,000 to 240,000 on the upside. And I think we’ll be substantially, hopefully, below the hundred number. And I think, right now, we’re heading at probably around 60-, maybe 65,000.”

Trump on April 10, 2020: “But the minimum, if you did this social distancing at every other aspect — and I think I can say 90 percent, maybe even more than that, were able to do it — the minimum number was 100,000 lives, and I think we’ll be substantially under that number. Hard to believe that if you had 60,000 — you could never be happy, but that’s a lot fewer than we were originally told and thinking. So they said between 100- and 220,000 lives on the minimum side, and then up to 2.2 million lives if we didn’t do anything. But it showed a just tremendous resolve by the people of this country.”

Trump on February 26, 2020: “So we’re at the low level.  As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.”