Donald Trump tore into President Joe Biden's handling of the coronaviruses on Saturday, pointing to the rising number of cases and trying to mimic the president's voice.
During a "Save America" rally in Florence, Arizona, Trump attacked Biden, who made the defeat of COVID-19 a priority during the 2020 presidential campaign and has tried to battle the virus through increased vaccinations among the general public.
"We all knew that Joe Biden was not as good as we thought, but few could have imagined that he would be a disaster for this country," the former president said. There are four times more evidence cases.
He continued, mimicking Biden's voice, "Remember, I'm gonna get rid of COVID."
The crowd was filled with many of Trump's most passionate supporters and laughed at the impersonation.
In his dig at the president, Trump was likely referring to the increased number of COVID-19 cases that the country faced as a result of the highly infectious Delta variant, which was the dominant strain headed into the Labor Day weekend last September. There were four times as many COVID-19 cases and a higher number of hospitalizations than in the same period in 2020, despite the fact that over half of the US population had received at least one dose of the vaccine.
January 16, 2022.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that Americans who were unvaccinated were more likely to die from the disease.
Unvaccinated Americans were the most at risk for serious infections from mid-June to July of last year, when the Delta variant was gaining a larger foothold across the country.
The Biden White House felt confident that it had made huge strides in "crushing" the coronaviruses, and that the new CDC recommendation that fully-vaccinated Americans could ditch their masks indoors and outdoors was a good sign. The high transmissibility of the Delta variant forced the administration to adjust its expectations and retool to face the emerging health threat.
During a November interview on the Fox Business Network program "Varney & Co.," Trump said that he wanted Biden to succeed in tackling the coronaviruses, which has caused societal upheaval across the globe since 2020.
I wanted him to succeed. He's been unsuccessful. The former president said it was a disaster.
During the interview, Trump never acknowledged the challenges that came from the new variant of the virus, despite being criticized for downplaying the severity of the virus.
The former president has opposed vaccine mandates, while Biden supports them.
The Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration's vaccine-or-test mandate for companies with over 100 employees, but allowed mandates to stand for health care workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs.
In recent weeks, Trump has been critical of politicians who have been coy about whether or not they have received a booster shot.
More than 850,000 people have died of the coronaviruses in the US as of January 16.
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