By Daniel Dale and Tara Subramaniam, CNN
Updated 4:15 PM ET, Sun March 22, 2020
Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump began March with a barrage of false claims about the coronavirus pandemic — understating the extent of the crisis, overstating the availability of tests, inaccurately blaming his predecessor and wrongly insisting that the crisis was unforeseen.
Trump made 50 false claims from March 2 through March 8, then 21 false claims from March 9 through March 15. Of those 71 false claims, 33 were related to the coronavirus. That is on top of some additional misleading claims from Trump about the coronavirus (we only count the false claims here), plus some false and misleading claims from members of his administration.
Trump is now averaging about 57 false claims per week since we started counting at CNN on July 8, 2019. From that date through March 15, he has made 2,062 false claims in all.
The most egregious false claim: The availability of coronavirus tests
On March 6, as doctors and health officials around the country were reporting a shortage of coronavirus tests, Trump said, “Anybody that wants a test can get a test. That’s what the bottom line is.”
In reality, Americans needed authorization from a doctor to get tested — and even many people who did have a doctor’s order could not get access.
This was Trump deceiving the country about one of the most critical problems of the crisis.
The most revealing false claim: Trade with Europe
Trump is serially reluctant to admit error, even trivial slips he makes while reading prepared speeches. Instead of correcting himself, he usually pretends that he has not slipped at all.
During his Oval Office address to the nation about the coronavirus on March 11, Trump, speaking from a script, announced that he was imposing restrictions on travel from Europe — and then added that “these prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo, but various other things as we get approval. Anything coming from Europe to the United States is what we are discussing.”
As he was forced to explain on Twitter after the speech, he was not actually banning trade and cargo from Europe.
So what happened? The usual, according to reporting from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Trump’s speech said the prohibitions would not apply to trade and cargo; Trump accidentally added the word “only,” reversing the meaning; Trump plowed ahead as usual.
The most absurd false claim: Handshakes in India
Continued
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Article URL : https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/22/politics/fact-check-trump-coronavirus-false-claims-march/index.html