White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows declared on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s administration will not “control” the coronavirus pandemic because it’s a “contagious virus.”
“We’re not going to control the pandemic,” White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “We are gonna control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation.”
Asked why the U.S. won’t get control of the pandemic, which has infected more than 8.5 million Americans and killed more than 224,000 people in the U.S., Meadows said, “Because it is a contagious virus, just like the flu.”
Meadows’ admission comes nine days before Election Day — though more than 58 million Americans have already cast their ballots, according to the U.S. Elections Project — and the morning after Vice President Mike Pence’s office announced that chief of staff Marc Short tested positive for Covid-19 on Saturday.
Meadows later suggested the U.S. would defeat it because, he said, that’s what Americans do.
Watch the video below:
MEADOWS: We're not going to control the pandemic
TAPPER: Why not?
M: Because it's a contagious virus
T: Why not make efforts to contain it?
M: What we need to do is make sure we have the proper mitigation factors to make sure people don't die pic.twitter.com/0DYgk4rB3T
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 25, 2020
