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Trump bragged about his knowledge of South Korea then got the population of its capital wrong

Trump bragged about his knowledge of South Korea then got the population of its capital wrong

Donald Trump's grasp of numbers isn't the strongest at the best of times but seems to have completely capitulated as the coronavirus pandemic has gone on.

Take for instance on Monday, when he was asked a very timely question about testing capacity in relation to South Korea, which has been praised for its response to the virus.

At the time of writing South Korea has confirmed 9,786 cases and 162 deaths, with the country reportedly testing 20,000 people per-day throughout March, in perhaps the most ambitious testing programme in the world.

In response to a question by PBS News Hour reporter Yamiche Alcindor, the president said:

I know South Korea better than anybody. It's a very tight - do you know how many people are in Seoul?

Do you know how big the city of Seoul is? 38 million people. That's bigger than anything we have.

Unfortunately for Trump, it appears that he should have done a little research before mentioning this as Seoul has a population of around 10 million, which is way off his total of 38 million.

It's not even clear how Trump came up with this figure as South Korea has a population of 51 million. Even Tokyo, which is the most populous city in the world has a population of just under 38 million.

Trump's glaring blunder did not go unnoticed and many people have been more than happy to fact check the president

The United States currently has more than 180,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19, the most in the world with 4,073 of these resulting in deaths.

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