In his latest campaign trail slip-up, 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden claimed Sunday that 200 million people have died from the novel Wuhan coronavirus.
“If Donald Trump has his way, the complications from COVID-19 which are well beyond what they should be, it’s estimated that 200 million people have died probably by the time I finish this talk,” Biden said during a campaign speech in Philadelphia.
The former vice president made similar gaffe before. In June during another campaign stop, Biden wrongly asserted 120 million had died from the Chinese virus, also in Pennsylvania.
“People don’t have a job, people don’t know where to go, they don’t know what to do,” Biden said. “Now we have over 120 million dead from COVID.”
The actual number, however, as of this writing, stands at just below 200,000 in the United States, and almost 1 million worldwide, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. A virus that kills 200 million Americans would kill about two-thirds of the entire population.
Sunday’s slip-up comes as merely the latest in a long list of campaign-trail mistakes that have called into question the 77-year-old’s age and aptitude to command the Oval Office. Read a full run-down of Biden’s best slip-ups here.
With 43 days until the November election, Democrats have built their case on the Trump administration’s handling of the public health crisis spurred by a mix of Chinese incompetency and maliciousness.
Although the dynamics of the race changed Friday following the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg leaving open a Supreme Court vacancy just weeks from election day, Democrats will no doubt continue to blame Trump for every American death from the once-in-a-generation pathogen unleashed onto the world from the nation’s greatest adversary overseas.
During a CNN town hall Thursday, Biden cast direct blame on Trump, unfairly charging the president with being responsible for every death from COVID-19, which even left-leaning PolitiFact rated as flat-out “false.“