Trump: Dems Only Want Bailout Funds "For Blue States That Are Doing Badly"

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President Donald Trump claimed Congressional Democrats only want coronavirus relief legislation approved “for Blue States that are doing badly” in comments published to his Twitter account earlier this morning.

“Democrats only want BAILOUT MONEY for Blue States that are doing badly. They don’t care about the people, never did!” the president wrote.

Democrats only want BAILOUT MONEY for Blue States that are doing badly. They don’t care about the people, never did!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people in the United States thus far. The president’s comments are misleading, however: Since June, the majority of the deaths related to the pandemic have come out of typically “red”––ør Republican––states. In the pandemic’s early days, the majority of deaths occurred in the Tri-State area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, with New York suffering the heaviest blow. However, cases in the area are now low and deaths in what was once the national hotspot for the virus have slowed to a crawl.

Yesterday, the president sparked controversy after he blamed blue states for the nationwide death toll.

“This was a prediction that if we do a really good job, we’ll be at about 100,000 and — 100,000 to 240,000 deaths, and we’re below that substantially, and we’ll see what comes out,” he said. “But that would be if we did a good job. If the not-so-good job was done, you’d be between 1.5 million — I remember these numbers so well — and 2.2 million. That’s quite a difference.”

He added: “So we’re down in this territory and that’s despite the fact that the blue states had had tremendous death rates. If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at. We’re really at a very low level. But some of the states, they were blue states and blue state-managed.”