During a virtual town hall on Fox News, Trump said about business closures without evidence that “more people are going to die if we allow this to continue.”

He went on to say, “We have to open this country up. We can socially distance ourselves and go to work, and you’ll have to work a little bit harder and you can clean your hands five times more than you’re used to. You don’t have to shake hands anymore with people. We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu – we never turn the country off. We lose much more than that to automobile accidents. We don’t call up automobile companies and say ‘stop making cars.”

He seemed to indicate that the only reason he allowed such measures in the first place was because of criticism if he hadn’t. “If I would have not done it, we would’ve been unbelievably criticized for not doing it. Somehow the word got out that this is the thing we’re supposed to be doing.”

Trump planned to reopen the economy nationwide by Easter. At the time, the United States had over 65,000 confirmed cases.

During the same town hall, he also wrongly claimed that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo rejected a chance to purchase 15,000 ventilators and said that state governors should treat him well if they want help.

Fox News – EXCLUSIVE: Trump, Coronavirus task force participate in Fox News town hall
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The New York Times – AP FACT CHECK: Trump Claims Rising Suicides if US Stays Shut
Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)