REVISED

Trump Says 80,000-100,000 Americans Will Die, Calls That a ‘Success’

Roughly two weeks ago, the president declared that anywhere from 50,000 to 60,000 Americans would die from the virus.

President Trump on Sunday radically revised upward his estimate of how many Americans would die from the novel coronavirus, saying that anywhere between 80,000 and 100,000 people could die—after he cited a death toll of 50,000 to 60,000 roughly two weeks ago. “That’s one of the reasons we’re successful, if you call losing 80 or 90 thousand people successful,” Trump said in a Fox News town hall at the Lincoln Memorial.

“I used to say 65,000,” the president added, “and now I’m saying 80 or 90 and it goes up and it goes up rapidly, but it’s still going to be, no matter how you look at it, at the lower end of the plane if we did the shutdown.” He later added: “We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people. That’s a horrible thing.” Trump, who declared in February that the country would see no more than 15 cases in total, has steadily increased his prediction of how many Americans would die from the virus.