On Saturday night, President Donald Trump made the dangerously inaccurate claim that 99% of coronavirus cases are "totally harmless." On Sunday morning, one of his top health experts failed to correct the assertion, a stunning breakdown of the government's core duty to keep Americans safe and protect the public health.
CNN's Dana Bash pressed US Food and Drug Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn repeatedly Sunday morning to explain the President's false statement in his Fourth of July speech from the South Lawn of the White House, one that minimized the devastating effects of the virus and seemed to encourage Americans to ignore the deadly risks of a pandemic that has so far claimed more than 129,000 American lives.
"I'm not going to get into who is right and who is wrong," Hahn, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, told Bash during CNN's "State of the Union" when she asked him to explain the basis for the President's claim and why he would be pushing the narrative that most Covid-19 cases are harmless when his public health experts are saying the opposite.
"What I'll say is that we have data in the White House task force. Those data show us that this is a serious problem. People need to take it seriously," the FDA chief said, after Bash asked him for the fourth time to correct the misinformation from the President.
If Trump officials are afraid to correct basic facts in the midst of a pandemic -- where the President seems to believe his reelection campaign is contingent on his ability to deliver good news about an economic revival and finding a vaccine to stop the spread of the virus -- can Americans trust the information coming from Trump and the administration about the safety and effectiveness of a potential vaccine later this year or next?
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