President Donald Trump’s gloating over West Virginia not having a case of COVID-19 backfired and Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) took him to the woodshed for it.
In a pathetic attack on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday, Trump tried to compare the liberal state to the red state of West Virginia to somehow demonstrate that red states are responding better to the pandemic.
Cuomo wants “all states to be treated the same.” But all states aren’t the same. Some are being hit hard by the Chinese Virus, some are being hit practically not at all. New York is a very big “hotspot”, West Virginia has, thus far, zero cases. Andrew, keep politics out of it….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2020
He even crowed about West Virginia again during a press update, only this time he insulted both New York and California by claiming that West Virginia doesn’t need a field hospital at this time.
Stay up-to-date with the latest news!
Subscribe and start recieving our daily emails.
“We’re not going to need them in West Virginia where so far, I guess they have none. Still none? Still none, West Virginia. Big Jim the governor, he must be doing a good job,” Trump said. “I just see West Virginia is the only one that has no cases. So obviously that’s being treated differently than in New York or California.”
Well, it didn’t take long for those statements to come back to bite him in the ass because West Virginia reported its first case of coronavirus just hours later.
And it turns out that the reason why West Virginia had not reported a case until now is because of the lack of tests available as a result of Trump’s poor response to the pandemic.
During an interview on CNN Wednesday morning, Manchin pointed that out and slammed Trump for lulling people into a “false sense of security” instead of spreading awareness of the virus and how dangerous it is.
“I just knew that if people weren’t prepared, if they got lulled into a false sense of security, we were going to be harmed,” he said. “Very, very devastating. I thought it was just carnage waiting to happen.”
Manchin criticized Trump for holding West Virginia up as a model for handling the virus because as a former governor of his state, Manchin knows full well how vulnerable the population is to this virus, with over 730,000 residents being elderly and over 230,000 under 60 who have chronic illnesses. It’s a disaster that will unfold over the next several weeks and months.
The fact is that West Virginia couldn’t test people up until a few days ago, and officials are still struggling to get more tests.
“They didn’t test, John!” Manchin said. “Up until a couple of days ago, we didn’t have 40 tests done, now we’re at 130 or so. But with that being said, John, we had no testing, we’re not prepared and people think we’re immune from this. When it hits my state, and it has hit, it’s going to be absolutely catastrophic, and we want to make sure we’re on top of this!”
Here’s the video via Twitter:
Yesterday, Trump touted WV because they didn’t have any coronavirus cases yet. They do now. @Sen_JoeManchin clearly explains to CNN what happened: “They didn’t test.” He warns “It’s going to absolutely catastrophic.” pic.twitter.com/IpRT8y6MiX
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) March 18, 2020
It should also be pointed out that California and New York have bigger populations and more urban areas while West Virginia is more rural. Trump’s decision to brag about West Virginia was a bad idea in every way.
Featured image via screen capture
Like what you see here? Join the discussion on Facebook over at Americans For Sanity!
