Remember when Trump... replied to a consideration of COVID-19 deaths per capita by saying "you can't do that"?

During an August 3, 2020 interview with Axios, Trump defended his administration’s response to COVID-19 by using data showing deaths per confirmed cases. When the interviewer noted the deaths per capita instead, Trump replied, “you can’t do that,” and went on to say that he was “reporting it wrong.”

.@jonathanvswan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”@realdonaldtrump: “You can’t do that.”
Swan: “Why can’t I do that?” pic.twitter.com/MStySfkV39
— Axios (@axios) August 4, 2020

The difference in considering deaths per cases and deaths per capita is that the former reflects the quality of healthcare for the infected, while the latter reflects the presence of COVID-19 through the population.

At the time of the interview, the United States ranked 10th highest in the world for deaths per capita, and had a case fatality rate of approximately 3.3%. It totaled 4,863,916 confirmed cases and 158,928 deaths. Trump downplayed concerns over COVID-19 since it first began to spread in the United States.

During the same interview, Trump also avoided offering any praise for the late civil rights leader and US Representative John Lewis.

Business Insider – Trump replied ‘you can’t do that’ when his interviewer pointed out the US’s terrible record on COVID-19 deaths per capita
Worldometer – Coronavirus, United States
Our World in Data – Case fatality rate vs. Total confirmed COVID-19 deaths