US President Donald Trump chose New Zealand, of all places, to use as a scapegoat while talking about the coronavirus pandemic on the campaign trail. Unluckily for him, Kiwi PM Jacinda Ardern was having none of it.
Just hours ago, Trump deflected questions about the epidemiological catastrophe happening under his watch by pointing the finger at New Zealand, which has led the world in pandemic containment thus far.
“The places they were using to hold up, they are having a big surge, and I don’t want that, I don’t want that,” he said during a trademark rant on the campaign trail in Minnesota.
“But they were holding up names of countries, and now they are saying ‘whoops’.”
“Even New Zealand, you see what is going on in New Zealand. ‘They beat it, they beat it.’ It was like front page [news], ‘they beat it’, because they wanted to show me something. The problem is… big surge in New Zealand. It’s terrible. We don’t want that.”
He then went back to bashing Cheyena China.
“All of a sudden a lot of the places they were using to hold up, they are having a big surge … New Zealand, you see what’s going on in New Zealand” — New Zealand had nine (9!) new Covid cases today. The US had more than 42,000.
The outbreaks are not comparable. pic.twitter.com/T8ugmKK6aa
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 17, 2020
Ardern quickly hit back, calling Trump’s comments “patently wrong”.
“Obviously I don’t think there’s any comparison between New Zealand’s current cluster and the tens of thousands of cases that are being seen daily in the United States,” she said on Tuesday afternoon.
For reference, the recent outbreak in Auckland currently totals around 70 cases, after the whole country had gone over 100 days without any community transmission.
Compare that to the US, which has recorded almost 5.5 million cases, more than any other country.
“Obviously, every country is experiencing its own fight with COVID-19; it is a tricky virus, but not one where I would compare New Zealand’s current status to the United States,” Ardern continued.
“I think anyone who’s following COVID and its transmission globally will quite easily see that New Zealand’s nine cases in a day does not compare to the United States’ tens of thousands, and in fact does not compare to most countries in the world.”
Simple, straight facts. When you come at the Queen, you best not miss.
