President Trump took to his official Twitter handle on May 28 to express how saddened he was about the nation reaching 100,000 deaths from the pandemic. The president touted this as a very sad milestone in his tweet, which was published a day after the aforesaid number was hit.
Extending his heartfelt sympathy and love to families and friends of those who succumbed to the deadly virus, Trump said these were great people. By the time Trump published this tweet, there were about 100, 442 deaths officially recorded in the United States, with about 1.7 million confirmed cases across the nation, CNBC reported.
America accounts for over 28 percent of the world's reported deaths from the pathogen. On the day the 100,000 number was reached, a White House spokesman released a statement saying President Trump's prayers for comfort and strength goes out to people grieving the death of a loved one or a friend due to the unprecedented plague, adding that the president's message to the country remains one of optimism, hope, and resilience.
The spokesman said President Trump is proud of the spirit, and courage of the American people who have always been strong, resilient, and determined to defeat the plague. He did not personally say anything about the sad milestone until May 28. He took the opportunity to slam what he deemed an illegal investigation into his presidential campaign in 2016, criticizing "Big Tech" in his tweet.
Former vice president Joe Biden shared a video on May 27 to mark the 100,000 milestones. Biden, who is also the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, said the nation grieves with all those who lost their loved ones amid the pandemic, urging them to take some solace from the fact that the entire nation is grieving with them.
In Jan. 2020, Trump didn't take the risk of the virus seriously and continued ignoring the concerns about it until March, just when the pandemic had started tightening its grip on the nation. In an interview with CNN on Jan. 22, Squawk Box co-host Joe Kernen asked the president if he was worried that the coronavirus outbreak in China would turn into a pandemic, but Trump denied at the time.
During the interview, the president continued claiming that it is going to be just fine, adding that they had it all under control. On Feb. 26, Trump claimed that the number of people with officially diagnoses coronavirus in America was low, predicting that it will soon drop even further. He took the credit for doing all the efforts to ensure the COVID-19 related risk remained low among American people.