Meadows Attempts to Clarify Remarks After Saying “We’re Not Going to Control” the Pandemic

Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 12:18 pm

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows attempted to clarify remarks he made yesterday about controlling the coronavirus pandemic after Democrat Joe Biden said his remarks were characteristic of the Trump administration and signaled they were “waving a flag of defeat.”

“The only person waving a white flag, along with his white mask, is Joe Biden,” Meadows said earlier this morning. “I mean, when we look at this, we’re going to defeat the virus. We’re not going to control it. We will try to contain it as best we can.”

Yesterday, Meadows told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” that the United States is “not going to control” the coronavirus pandemic” despite confirmation that cases are spiking around the country and after the country registered its highest number of daily cases since mid-July.

“We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas,” Meadows said, assuring that the Trump administration is “making efforts to contain it.” “What we need to do is make sure that we have the proper mitigation factors, whether it’s therapies or vaccines or treatments to make sure that people don’t die from this.”

In a statement shortly after Meadows made his remarks, Biden said, “This wasn’t a slip by Meadows. It was a candid acknowledgment of what President Trump’s strategy has clearly been from the beginning of this crisis: to wave the white flag of defeat and hope that by ignoring it, the virus would simply go away. It hasn’t, and it won’t.”

Meadows doubled down this morning, saying that the administration is “very hopeful, based on a number of conversations, that vaccines are just a few weeks away, and we’re in preparation for that.”

Meadows’s statements come after President Donald Trump insisted that case numbers are only up because of increased testing and that the “fake news media” is conspiring against him to hurt his re-election chances.

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Alan Herrera

Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.

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