Trump news: President smears vaccine whistleblower as coronavirus shutdown sees US unemployment claims soar to 36m
President claims testing is 'overrated' and demands allies investigate Obama as global death toll tops 300,000
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump lashed out at Dr Rick Bright, who blew the whistle on the president’s efforts to promote an unproven anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a remedy for coronavirus, ahead of his appearance before Congress on Thursday as the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits because of the shutdown climbed to 36m.
Those developments followed the president calling on the states to reopen their schools as soon as possible as part of lockdown-ending measures, contradicting the advice of top expert Dr Anthony Fauci on the highly dubious basis that coronavirus has “very little impact on young people”.
His remarks following more than 1.4m cases of Covid-19 and a death toll of more than 84,500 and as New York and 14 other states began investigating the possible outbreak of a coronavirus-related illness impacting children, some fatally.
The global death toll reached more than 300,000 on Thursday, with deaths in the US accounting for nearly a third of that towering figure.
After his whistle-blower complaint revealed the administration's attempts to dismiss warnings and award lucrative pharmaceutical contracts to White House connections, Dr Bright's testimony warned Americans that a "window" for an effective response against the pandemic is beginning to close as he urged Congress and the administration to lead with science and adapt a national testing strategy as nearly every state begins to ease quarantine efforts.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has dismissed allegations in the complaint, and the president claims he doesn't know Dr Bright, who was charged with the relatively important task of vaccine development, though the president called him a "disgruntled employee".
The president meanwhile stopped in Allentown, Pennsylvania, for another White House-sponsored campaign stop in which he attacked his political rival Joe Biden, talked about "globalists" and claimed "it's a beautiful thing to see" health workers "running into death just like soldiers running into bullets".
He also claimed that coronavirus testing "is, frankly, overrated" while also claiming that the US has the best testing "in the world".
The president told a workers at a medical supply distribution centre: "When you test, you have a case. When you test you find something is wrong with people. If we didn't do any testing, we would have very few cases."
He also called on his Republican ally Senator Lindsey Graham to call Barack Obama to testify in his fishing-expedition "Obamagate" conspiracy. The senator said "that would open up a can of worms".
"I think it would be a bad precedent to compel a former president to come before the Congress," he said. "For a variety of reasons, I don't think that's a good idea."
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