CHINA/CORONAVIRUS: [Reporter: “Mr. President, could you speak to the grim milestone today of 200,000 deaths to the virus? What do you want to say to the American people?”]
“Well, I think it’s a shame. I think if we didn’t do it properly and do it right, you’d have two and a half million deaths. If you take a look at alternatives, you could have two and a half million deaths or something thereabouts. You could have a number that would be substantially more.
With all of that being said, we shouldn’t have had anybody. And you saw my United Nations speech. China should’ve stopped it at their border. They should’ve never let this spread all over the world, and it’s a terrible thing. But had we not closed our country down and reopened — and now we’re doing well in reopening; the stock market is up — all of those things. But I think it’s a horrible thing.
But if we had not done it right, you could have two million, two and a half million, or three million. But it’s a horrible thing. It should’ve never, ever happened. China let this happen, and just remember that.”
-Donald Trump, “Remarks by President Trump Before Marine One Departure,” whitehouse.gov, Sep. 22, 2020