Woman who lost father to COVID-19 slams Trump for downplaying virus [Video]

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Kristin Urquiza criticized President Donald Trump once again over Bob Woodward’s revelations that the president intentionally downplayed the pandemic during its early days.
• Urquiza, a speaker at the Democratic National Convention last month, lost her father to COVID-19 in June.
• The US has recorded over 6.4 million confirmed coronavirus cases with over 192,000 deaths.

President Donald Trump admitted to journalist Bob Woodward that he intentionally downplayed the coronavirus pandemic despite knowing its severity.

Shortly after, Kristin Urquiza, a woman who spoke at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) last month criticizing the president, has again lambasted Trump’s crisis handling.

She was emotional in her DNC speech last month, where she shared how his father, a Trump supporter, died after contracting COVID-19 in June.

“My dad was a healthy 65-year-old. His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that, he paid with his life… Donald Trump may not have caused the coronavirus, but his dishonesty and his irresponsible actions made it so much worse,” she said back then.

On Thursday, during a phone call with reporters, Urquiza further denounced Trump’s COVID-19 handling. “That betrayal of my father and our country is even more clear now. The president’s lies are undeniable and inexcusable.”

“If Donald Trump had told the American people in public what he had told Bob Woodward in private, thousands of lives could have been spared, including my dad. The sad thing is that it didn’t have to be this way. These deaths were needless and preventable,” she said.

Urquiza’s new criticism follows a day after the news broke that Trump concealed the severity of the coronavirus in his February interview with Woodward. Then, in his March interview, the president said that he intentionally played down the virus outbreak.

“I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic,” Trump said in his March 19 call interview with Woodward. The audio clip was posted at The Washington Post’s website on Wednesday.

Trump also disclosed during the interview that the virus was more fatal than the initial understanding. “Now it’s turning out it’s not just old people, Bob. But just today, and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older,” he said, adding, “young people, too, plenty of young people.”

Biden and top Democrat leaders have also been criticizing Trump over his mishandling of the pandemic. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it a “life-and-death betrayal of the American people.”

Based on the revelation from Woodward’s interview, Pelosi told reporters on Thursday that Trump showed his “contempt for the American people and their health, contempt for science, contempt for any real effort to crush the virus, contempt for his supporters, their children, their parents.”

Presently, the coronavirus cases in the US have reached 6.4 million, with 192,000 fatalities due to COVID-19.

Source: AOL.com