President Donald Trump insisted for the seventh straight month that the coronavirus will magically “go away” and falsely claimed that children are “virtually immune” to the virus, a dangerous lie that resulted in Facebook and Twitter taking action.
During a rambling interview with Fox & Friends on Wednesday, Trump once again shrugged off the pandemic, which has infected 4.5 million Americans and has claimed nearly 160,000 lives and counting.
“This thing’s going away,” Trump said. “It will go away like things go away.”
Except Trump has been making this claim for months now and the coronavirus has only gotten worse and is not going away any time soon.
In fact, it’s only going to spread further if Trump has his way by forcing schools to reopen, which he defended by telling yet another lie about kids and the virus.
“The fact is they are virtually immune from this problem,” Trump claimed.
Here’s the video via Twitter:
Holy shit. Trump says, “My view is the schools should open. This thing is going away. It will go away like things go away, and my view is that schools should be open.”
He then falsely claims kids are “almost immune” from Covid. Just stunningly irresponsible stuff. pic.twitter.com/G8tab1rzpA
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 5, 2020
But children are most certainly NOT immune to the virus. They contract it, and many have even died. Or, they end up carrying the virus to their parents and grandparents who get sick and possibly die, something these kids would have to live with for the rest of their lives.
Trump told a damnable lie, and that’s why Facebook acted by removing a video on Trump’s Facebook page containing the false information.
“This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation,” Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone told NBC News.
Twitter would follow that up by outright suspending a Trump campaign account for sharing the same misinformation.
Clearly, Trump’s lies are going to end up getting kids sick. Some will likely die. The virus will be passed to teachers and parents, resulting in more potential deaths. This is not a political game. We are talking about life and death. As president, Trump should be taking this seriously. Instead, he has referred to the deaths by saying, “It is what it is.”
Seriously, schools need to stay closed. It’s just too bad Facebook and Twitter can’t suspend Trump’s mouth. Because only then would America be safer as this pandemic drags on.
Featured Image: Screenshot
