DONALD TRUMP says the United States' response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been "better than the world".
Speaking to AXIO's Jonathan Swan on Monday, Trump sensationally claimed that the US was dealing with the coronavirus crisis better than any other country, despite their death toll being the highest in the world.
The President argued that while America's case numbers were high, the recovery rate per case for the US was better than most.
He continued his insistence that America's case numbers were so high because they were testing more than any other nation on the planet.
During the fascinating interview, Swan put it to the President that the figures were alarming when considered with the death toll in proportion to the population of the country, which currently stands at roughly 160,000 deaths from a population of 350 million.
.@jonathanvswan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”@realdonaldtrump: “You can’t do that.”
Swan: “Why can’t I do that?” pic.twitter.com/MStySfkV39— Axios (@axios) August 4, 2020
"You can't do that," Trump insisted.
"You have to go by the cases. When you have somebody where there's a case, [you have to consider] the people that live from those cases.
"We're lower than the world. We're lower than Europe. Take a look."
The interviewer then challenged Trump by telling him to look at South Korea, where they have a population of just 50 million people and only 300 deaths from Covid-19.
"You don't know that," Trump replied.
"You think they [South Korea] are faking their statistics," Swan responds.
"I won't get into that because I have a very good relationship with the country, but you don't know that. And they have spikes," stressed Trump.
"We have cases because of the testing."
Trump's handling of the coronavirus crisis in the US has been widely criticised, particularly due to the President's insistence that very little is wrong with the country's high rate of infection and death from Covid-19.
Earlier this week Mr Trump described his own Covid-19 coordinator Deborah Birx "pathetic" after she said that the virus was "extraordinarily widespread" across the US, concluding that Birx had given into pressure from the Democrats' Nancy Pelosi during questioning.
"Deborah took the bait and hit us. Pathetic!" He tweeted.
