Pelosi suggests Trump is to blame for the deaths of 50,000 Americans

 May 21, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris


Speaking to the press in her weekly briefing, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blamed President Donald Trump’s slow response for the deaths of 50,000 Americans, without even saying his name.

She cited a Columbia report which recently revealed that if the president had shut down the United States just a week earlier, half of the people in the United States could have been saved.

“Did you see the Columbia report that came out?” Pelosi asked the reporters. “That if one week sooner, one week sooner, we had had a lockdown as other countries did. Korea and the United States had — I don’t know if it’s the first case or the first death — the same day. They locked down. They’ve lost over 300 people. Just over 300 people. We waited a couple of weeks. The report further says if we had done it when Korea did, we would have saved over 50,000 lives. But just one week was well into the over 30,000 people who would not have died.”  

One week would have saved 36,000 people, the report said.

“So, we really just have to be smart and strategic and that is what our bill does,” Pelosi continued. “Testing, tracing, treatment, isolation. It’s smart. It’s strategic. It has a vision. It has a goal and a time table. It has milestones. It has thresholds. A plan. A strategic plan to quantify what this is and to be able to trace and treat so that we can defeat this virus.”

When Trump was asked about the study, he denied it was accurate, instead calling it “fake news” and attacking CBS reporter Weija Jiang. The White House later reconsidered the message, and blamed China and the WHO instead.

“What would have saved life is if China had been transparent and the World Health Organization had fulfilled its mission,” said their statement.

Watch Pelosi below:
Pelosi took a minute today to point out the study that found the US could have saved 50,000 people if we'd acted as South Korea did. She's not mean about it, but it's quietly a really sharp criticism of Trump. pic.twitter.com/LtLgCYQxb5
— Michael McAuliff (@mmcauliff) May 21, 2020