‘A mistake is a mistake’: Trump on consequences for China following virus outbreak
When asked if China should face consequences following the coronavirus outbreak that originated in the country and spread around the world, President Trump said that “a mistake is a mistake.”
Video Transcript
REPORTER: You spoke-- and we heard Dr. Birx a moment ago again say-- that every country has a responsibility to tell the rest of what's going on. You've talked repeatedly about how this could have been stopped in the past I know you don't want to telegraph what you would do, but do you think that there should be some consequences if, in the end, China was responsible for all of this?
DONALD TRUMP: Well, if they were knowingly responsible, certainly. If they did-- if it was a mistake, a mistake is a mistake. But if they were knowingly responsible, yeah. Then there should be consequences.
Uh-- you're talking about, you know, potentially lives like nobody's seen since 1917. And, you know, the other thing, had we not done what we did in terms of closing-- because there is that concept of let's let it ride. But at some point, I'm going to have to-- I don't want to embarrass countries that I like and leaders that I like, but you have to see some of these numbers. In my opinion-- so we're talking about maybe 60,000 or so. That's a lot of people but that's-- 100,000 was the minimum, we thought, that we could get to. And we will be lower than that number-- anywhere from 100,000 to 220,000 people. But I really believe it could have been millions of people had we not done what we did. We made a lot of good decisions. But one of those things. Go ahead.
