When asked what his message is to Americans who are scared during the coronavirus crisis, President Donald Trump offered stark contrasting responses to two reporters.
The president’s exchange with NBC White House correspondent Peter Alexander on March 20 was widely circulated, and he even received criticism for it.
When asked by Alexander what he says to “Americans who are scared” during a press conference, Trump gave an unexpected response.
“I say that you’re a terrible reporter, that’s what I say,” he said to Alexander, continuing to call it “a very nasty question” and telling the NBC reporter he “ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
In case you missed it, see the moment below:
Q: What do you say to Americans who are scared
— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) March 20, 2020
TRUMP: "I say that you're a terrible reporter, that's what I say."
Unreal. pic.twitter.com/RJ1aJXJUUh
However, when asked by Fox News’ Sean Hannity late Thursday during a phone call interview a similar question, the president offered a much different response.
After first bringing up how Trump has told his younger son, Barron Trump, that the coronavirus outbreak is “bad,” Hannity asked Trump, “Where is he now?”
Hannity then added in his question, “What do you say to those Americans that they see the headlines, they read the worst of the worst, you’ve got death counts on TV almost 24/7 … What do say to Americans that are very, very concerned, worried, even fearful about this?”
“As anybody who is a parent knows … it’s very hard talking about a thing like this because it’s so negative, it’s death,” Trump said of talking to children about the current situation, adding, “You don’t like discussing it.”
Trump continued to say, “There’s not been anything like this in this country. … One thing that I can say that’s really good, the mortality rate is much, much better in our way than people were thinking at the beginning.”
The president then suggested that he believes the mortality rate for the coronavirus is “very significantly under 1%” — which he called a “tremendous thing” — due to people who have not been tested for the coronavirus who may have it.
Watch Trump’s interview below:
Though the World Health Organization said on March 3 the coronavirus mortality rate was 3.4%, there does not seem to be a more recent global rate reported since.
In the U.S., the rate is less than 1.5%, however, as infectious disease expert Dr. Steven Lawrence told NPR, “Case fatality rates have been very confusing. The numbers may look different even if the actual situation is the same.”
He also adds that the fatality rate in the U.S. could end up being between 0.5% and 1% but, “To put it into perspective, that’s 5 to 10 times more fatal than flu.”
The number of deaths due to the coronavirus topped 1,000 in the United States early Thursday. Additionally, on Thursday, the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. surpassed those in China and Italy, as the country now has the most reported cases globally.