Chief of Staff Mark Meadows Defends Trump Comment That 99% of Coronavirus Cases Are ‘Harmless’

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is backing up President Donald Trump’s comments in which he claimed that 99 percent of coronavirus cases are “totally harmless.”

Trump made the remark during a speech on the South Lawn of the White House Saturday.

“There were no tests for a new virus, but now we have tested over 40 million people,” Trump said. “But by so doing, we show cases, 99 percent of which are totally harmless.”

The New York Times, the AP, and CNN are among the outlets which published fact checks completely dismantling Trump’s claim. Johns Hopkins currently puts the fatality rate of the coronavirus in the U.S. at 4.5 percent. This to say nothing of the fact that many would take umbrage with the idea that non-fatal cases are harmless. The Times reports that 15 to 20 percent of all Covid-19 cases require hospitalization.

In an interview on Fox & Friends Monday, host Brian Kilmeade challenged Meadows on Trump’s claim.

“Where did he get that stat from?” Kilmeade asked. “Is that a generalization?”

“When you start to look at the stats and look at all the numbers that we have, the amount of testing that we have, the vast majority of people are safe from this,” Meadows claimed. “When you look at the deaths that we have, if you’re over 80 years of age, or if you have what they call co-morbidities — diabetes, hypertension, heart issues — then you need to be very, very careful. Outside of that, the risks are extremely low, and the president is right with that. And the facts and statistics back us up there.”

Watch above, via Fox News.