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Greg Evans
May 20, 2020
Most people would agree that the coronavirus pandemic has not been Donald Trump's finest hour as the president of the United States.
The US currently has the highest death toll in the world and is the only country in the world with more than one million confirmed infections.
However, in an unprecedented move, Trump has tried to put a positive spin on these numbers by claiming that having so many cases is a 'badge of honour.'
During a meeting with his cabinet in the East Room of the White House, Trump pinpointed that the amount of cases shows that the US is somehow leading the way when it comes to testing.
By the way, when you say that we lead in cases, that’s because we have more testing than anybody else. Actually the number of cases, and we’re also a much bigger country than most, so when we have a lot of cases, I don’t look at that as a bad thing, I look at that as, in a certain respect, as a good thing, because it means our testing is better.
I view it as a badge of honour. Really, it’s a badge of honour. It’s a great tribute to the testing and all of the work that a lot of professionals have done.
Sure, that's one way of spinning it but we doubt the 1.56 million Americans who have contracted Covid-19 since January would agree.
In terms of outrageous Trump statements, we'll admit that we have heard a lot worse, especially since the pandemic started but we're pretty sure that the word 'honour' should never be associated with the failure to act on preventing the spread of a novel virus when you already had all the tools to do so.
Needless to say, people were not impressed.
As a few people pointed out it wasn't so long ago that Trump was complaining about tests coming back as positive weren't "necessarily great" after several members of his administration staff came down with the disease.
So, don't are the tests an 'honour' or not 'necessarily great'? We dare say that by this time next week we'll have another completely different answer.