Donald Trump thinks Covid-19 is a more intelligent adversary than his political opponents. The President appeared to praise the virus’ intellect during a rambling Fox News interview.
Trump spoke to Fox & Friends for around 50 minutes on Friday and covered a wide range of subjects. The hosts asked him about the Department of Justice decision to drop the case against Michael Flynn.
Trump said the move “absolutely” proved the Russia investigation was a hoax. Later, he compared the global pandemic to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
“Our country is going back to work, we are opening up,” Trump said of lockdowns.
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Trump talks about the economy and unemployment:
The optics of Trump ranting about how great the economy used to be alongside a graphic showing the current unemployment rate at 14.7 percent isn't great pic.twitter.com/A5UThYOWk7
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 8, 2020
He then repeated a claim that Coronavirus is somehow intelligent. In fact, he said the disease was smarter than his Democratic opponents, Russia investigators and his own former attorney general, Jeff Sessions.
“It’s a much smarter enemy than the enemy we just talked about, much smarter. Those folks, they are not in the same league,” Trump said.
“This is a very brilliant enemy. And it happens to be invisible.”
Trump also addressed the record unemployment numbers that were released during his interview. He took no responsibility for the Depression era-levels of joblessness.
“We created the greatest economy in the history of the world,” Trump said.
“We were blowing away China, we were blowing away everybody, we were the envy of the world and then they came in and they explained it and they said ‘Sir, you have to turn it off, we have to close the country.'”
“Those jobs will all be back and they’ll be back very soon and next year we’re going to have a phenomenal year,” Trump said.
“People are ready to go, we’ve got to get it open, people are ready to go.”
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Darragh Roche is a journalist covering U.S. politics and media