Trump praises his efforts in handling virus

US President Donald Trump says he has "done an amazing" and "incredible job" handling the coronavirus, even as the country surpasses 200,000 virus deaths. Trump boasted of his administration's efforts in an interview with WJBK FOX 2 Detroit at the White House Tuesday just before Johns Hopkins University announced the confirmed US death toll now tops 200,000 people -- the highest in the world.

He claims, "We've done an incredible job between the ventilators and now the vaccines and everything else and the therapeutics" and insisted, "The only thing we've done a bad job in is public relations because we haven't been able to convince people - which is basically the fake news - what a great job we've done." Trump claimed the country could have had two to three million deaths had his administration taken no action while brushing off suggestions – backed by models – that if he had shut down the country sooner, thousands of lives could have been saved. And he appeared to be trying to rewrite history as he insisted that when he recommended certain lockdown measures, "everybody said there's no reason to shut down," including the nation's top infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci.

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