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US President Donald Trump on Saturday talked up his administration’s response to the Covid-19 epidemic, telling supporters at an election rally that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi was impressed and complimented him on the size of the testing within the United States.
The president, who has confronted criticism of his dealing with of the epidemic that has killed practically 190,000 Americans, got here beneath additional scrutiny this previous few days for admitting to Bob Woodward, for his upcoming e book, that he had downplayed the menace from the virus although he knew precisely how deadly it was.
Trump blames the excessive variety of US infections — 6.four million — on extra testing, which he goes on to examine to decrease testing numbers in India a number of occasions earlier than, to defend his administration’s response. He additionally throws within the measurement of the inhabitants of the 2 international locations tor impact.
“We have the best testing programme in the world by far,” he informed supporters at an election rally in Nevada, a battleground state. “We’ve tested more people than India, than many, many big countries put together. India’s second, we are 44 million tests ahead of India. They have 1.5 billion people.”
“And Prime Minister Modi calls me (and) says what a job you’ve done with testing,” he mentioned, recounting a dialog with the prime minister, the small print of which couldn’t be ascertained instantly. They final spoke in early June they usually had mentioned Covid-19 then, amongst a bunch of different points.
The United States had carried out 95.6 million exams by Saturday afternoon in accordance to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). India had achieved 56.2 million, in accordance to the Indian Council Medical Research. The president, it appears, used an outdated quantity for India’s testing complete when he claimed the US was forward by 44 million.
Trump moved on to different topics at the rally shortly. But bringing up Modi to endorse his response to the Covid-19 epidemic was maybe a primary and, notably, at an election rally.
Trump trails former Vice-President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, in nationwide polls, although the hole has narrowed in latest day and can scale back additional nearer to November 3, the election day. He is now behind Biden by 7.5 factors within the RealClearPolitics common of polls.
The Trump 2020 marketing campaign launched just lately a video fabricated from clips from the “Howdy Modi” occasion that he attended with Modi in Houston final September and the “Namaste Trump” rally at Ahmedabad in February, in a bid to woo 1.eight million Indian Americans voters; they might rely in battleground states.
Biden has picked an Indian American, Senator Kamala Harris, as his working mate, and rolled out an expansive plan for the welfare of India Americans and for US-India relations if he was elected president.
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