White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on Monday tried to clean up his statement from Sunday in which he admitted the White House isn't even trying to contain the novel coronavirus pandemic -- but he wound up mocking Democratic nominee Joe Biden for wearing a face mask.
While meeting with reporters at the White House, Meadows tried to claim that the Trump administration has not, in fact, surrendered to the virus.
"The only person waving a white flag, as well as a white mask, is Joe Biden," Meadows said. "When we look at this, we're going to defeat the virus, we're not going to control it, we will try to contain it as best we can, if you look at the full context of what I was talking about, is we need to make sure we have therapeutics and vaccines."
During an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, Meadows explicitly said, "we’re not going to control the pandemic" before adding that "we are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation."
At the moment, there is no vaccine for the novel coronavirus, which so far has killed more than 220,000 Americans in just eight months. According to the COVID-19 Tracking Project, there have been an average of 68,954 infections per day over the past seven days, which is a record high in the United States.
Watch the video below.
WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows both doubles down and tries to walk back his comment that “we're not going to contro… https://t.co/8MzJ0Gxa7w— The Recount (@The Recount) 1603718272.0
