Day 1,380: Trump’s closing COVID-19 lie: doctors are inflating number of deaths to get an extra $2,000

As the Election Day nears, and COVID-19 cases are shattering daily records, Donald Trump is continuing his verbal assault of healthcare workers on the frontlines of fighting the deadly disease.

For months, he has undercut the hard work doctors and scientists are doing, cast doubt on their research and findings, and touted sham treatments. He has accused them of stealing supplies. Friday, at a rally in Michigan, Trump accused doctors of inflating COVID-19 death totals to make “like, $2,000 more” per patient.

Trump lied and said, “You know, our doctors get more money if someone dies from COVID, you know that right?…So what they do is they say…’everyone dies from COVID.’”

The goal for Trump is to cast doubt on the 227,000-plus people who have died from COVID-19. If anything, that figure likely substantially undercounts the number of Americans who have succumbed to the disease.

Having failed to live up to the moment and adequately fight COVID-19 from the start, in the final days of his campaign, Trump continues to fecklessly attack the science, the medicine and the clinicians doing the fighting for him.

1,380 days in, 82 to go

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