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Trump demands China pay US$10 trillion in reparations for its handling of coronavirus pandemic
- In his first speech in months, Trump took aim at infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci but remained coy about his own political future
- ‘The survival of America depends upon our ability to elect Republicans at every level, starting with the midterms next year,’ Trump said
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Former US president Donald Trump on Saturday sharply attacked infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, demanded reparations from China and denounced an investigation into his finances in a speech in North Carolina.
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It was Trump’s first speech in months, and he took the opportunity to frame next year’s midterm elections as a battle for the “survival of America” while keeping followers guessing on his own plans for 2024.
Speaking in Greenville, North Carolina, at the state’s Republican Party convention, Trump joined a chorus of Republican politicians who are criticising Fauci for asking Americans to wear masks to guard against the virus and who at times has been sceptical of a theory that the virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
Trump called Fauci “not a great doctor but a great promoter” for his frequent television appearances. “But he’s been wrong on almost every issue and he was wrong on Wuhan and the lab also,” Trump said.
The origin of the virus remains hotly contested and remains under study by US intelligence agencies.
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Trump’s own handling of the pandemic, in which nearly 600,000 people in the United States have died and he himself was infected, was a factor in his loss to Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 2020 election.
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