Donald Trump on Friday took his lying about COVID to new lows, claiming that U.S. doctors will write down a patient’s death from a heart attack or cancer as a COVID death because they will financially gain from it.
Said Trump in Michigan: “Our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID. You know that, right? I mean our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say ‘I’m sorry but everybody dies of COVID.”
CNN’s Anderson Cooper blasted Trump in a Friday night monologue: “The president is all-in on lying about the virus now. He’s telling crowds and maskless people they are social distancing and wearing masks. He’s saying the virus is going away. It’s not. It’s spreading. He says the doctors are lying about the death toll. They aren’t. The death toll is actually underreported.”
“No, it’s not true,” Cooper added. “Doctors and nurses are risking their lives. They very possibly saved the life of that man right there and this is how our president treats them, out frontline heroes. It’s not enough for our self-described wartime president to get our fellow citizens hating and fighting one another. He’s now trying to get us to turn on the very people who are defending us on the frontlines, fighting this virus. His supporters nod their heads there, they cheer and they jeer. That’s what we have become.”
“No, Mr. President, it is not that we are testing more, because in some states with your encouragement we’re actually testing less,” Cooper continued. “It’s not the doctors trying to earn extra cash from people dying, faking death counts, which is obscene. They’re risking their lives along with nurses and hospital staffs to save others.”
The president of the American Medical Association Susan R. Bailey M.D. also blasted Trump’s “malicious” lie:
“Throughout this pandemic, physicians, nurses, and frontline health care workers have risked their health, their safety and their lives to treat their patients and defeat a deadly virus. They did it because duty called and because of the sacred oath they took. The suggestion that doctors—in the midst of a public health crisis—are overcounting COVID-19 patients or lying to line their pockets is a malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided charge. COVID-19 cases are at record highs today. Rather than attacking us and lobbing baseless charges at physicians, our leaders should be following the science and urging adherence to the public health steps we know work—wearing a mask, washing hands and practicing physical distancing.”
