Mayor Bill de Blasio has expanded New York City‘s five-day furlough to 9,000 city workers, including staff not protected by unions, in order to make $21 million in savings for the cash-strapped Big Apple.

De Blasio announced the furloughs in a press conference Wednesday saying that all managerial employees of the city government and all employees not represented by organized labor will be affected.

The furloughs, a one-week unpaid leave of absence per worker, will take place from October through to March 2021 and will hit more than 9,000 workers at city agencies. 

It will save New York City around $21 million – something that will barely put a dent in its massive budget deficit of $4.2 billion.

The latest cuts come one week after de Blasio said he was furloughing himself and up to 500 of his own mayoral staff – including his wife – for a week in a move that will save the city $860,000.  

De Blasio said the latest round of furloughs had been a ‘difficult’ decision and called it ‘very sad’ and ‘painful’. 

‘It’s a difficult one because it will affect real people and their lives,’ de Blasio said. 

‘It will affect their families and these are the people who have been working non-stop for months trying to protect all of you and look out for the whole city.’

‘It’s something very sad when the people who have worked so hard have to sacrifice further.’  

De Blasio warned that more permanent job losses could become a reality if the federal government doesn’t send aid to the city or if the state doesn’t authorize it to borrow funds. 

He has repeatedly said 22,000 city jobs are on the line and could face the chop as soon as next month. 

He said the city was working with labor groups and unions to find other savings and prevent layoffs. 

‘Something that’s very painful to have to announce as real human consequences, but it is necessary, and we continue our conversations with the labor unions, we continue our conversations with Albany trying to get relief.

‘We don’t have results yet, we need to keep finding savings to keep urging us to give us a chance to get to something better than layoffs no one wants to see layoffs, but unfortunately they’re still on the table,’ de Blasio said. 

He took aim at the federal government as well as Governor Andrew Cuomo for so far failing to help bail the addled city out.  

‘Look what would really solve this, a federal stimulus and it’s shocking that it still hasn’t happened, and hope continues to dim for anything in the next few months, and then long term borrowing Albany I continue to say it is a straightforward time-honored option, it is something makes so much sense to stop this uncertainty, and we’re going to keep fighting for that as well.’

Last week, de Blasio furloughed himself and 495 City Hall staffers for a week at some point during the same period of October to March. 

‘It was not a decision I made lightly,’ de Blasio said last Wednesday. 

‘To have to do this is painful for them and their families, but it is the right thing to do at this moment in history.’  

While other staffers will not work for the duration of the unpaid week of leave, the mayor promised that he will continue working without pay during his own.   

The city, which has a workforce of nearly 325,000 employees, has been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic after it became the global virus epicenter with around 800 New Yorkers dying every day at its April peak. 

As well as the many lives lost, the pandemic hit the city hard financially, costing a staggering $9 billion in revenue and forcing a $7 billion cut to the city’s annual budget. 

This comes at a time when the city also needs to plug a $4.2 billion deficit in its 2021 budget. 

Fears are mounting that the Big Apple is on the verge of falling into disrepair, as crime rates soar and homelessness is rife. 

New York City‘s murder rate has soared by 27 percent and gang violence has risen by more than 50 percent in 2020, according to new NYPD data published in the 2020 Mayor’s Management Report last Thursday.  

While the report from City Hall attributes this particular surge to the NYPD ‘improving its capacity to more accurately identify incidents as gang related’, the findings come at a time when drive-by shootings and gun crime are becoming increasingly commonplace across the city.   

Meanwhile, widespread business closures, a lack of employment opportunities and support services shuttered for months during lockdown has forced more New Yorkers onto the streets and homeless encampments have now been set up on all corners of Manhattan.

There are now around 63,000 homeless people in New York’s five boroughs.

De Blasio, who himself has a personal net worth of $2.5 million, has come under fire for his handling of the burgeoning crisis.

In June, the mayor cut $1 billion from the NYPD’s $6 billion budget as calls to ‘defund’ the police grew from Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the Memorial Day ‘murder’ of black man George Floyd in Minneapolis. 

The cuts came after shocking footage circulated on social media of NYPD cops violently attacking protesters gathered to demand an end to police brutality and racism.   

Drastic budget cuts have been made to essential services leaving the city’s streets and parks – not long ago a hive of urban activity – dirty and overflowing with rubbish.  

Rich New Yorkers fled the city in their droves during the pandemic and with many offices yet to reopen and fears of the city’s demise, many are staying away for the foreseeable future. 

De Blasio has repeatedly touted the possibility of raising taxes for the wealthy to help plug the hole in the city’s budget deficit. 

‘Help me tax the wealthy. Help me redistribute wealth. Help me build affordable housing in white communities if you want desegregation,’ the mayor said on The Brian Lehrer Show in August.  

Cuomo previously said he was against such a move and instead begged the wealthy to return. 

However, earlier this month he said he was no longer ruling it out. 

‘This will be a hole in the financial plan so large that it will be impossible to fill,’ Cuomo said. 

‘What would we do to try to fill it? Taxes, cuts, borrowing, early retirements [of government workers]. All of the above.’ 

He said the federal government needs to provide crisis funding but so far no respite has been offered.  

The remains of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrived at the Supreme Court Wednesday morning where she will lie in repose for two days at the place she served for 27 years.

President Donald Trump will join the thousands of expected mourners when he pays his respects with a Thursday visit. 

‘The President will pay his respects to the late justice on Thursday at the U.S. Supreme Court where she will be lying in repose,’ White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said in a statement.

Thousands are expected at the Supreme Court building on Wednesday and Thursday when Ginsburg’s coffin lies on the front steps for public viewing, to pay tribute to the woman who became a liberal icon.

Ginsburg’s casket, draped in the American flag, was carried up the court steps and into the building on Wednesday morning for a ceremony with her family, former law clerks and fellow justices.

‘Ruth is gone and we grieve,’ Chief Justice John Roberts said in his eulogy. ‘Of course, she will live on in what she did to improve the law and the lives of all of us.’

Ahead of her casket’s arrival, 120 of her former law clerks lined up in rows down the Supreme Court’s stairs, dressed in black and wearing black face coverings in an image of solemn mourning.

The clerks formed an honor guard as her remains arrived at the building where she served, standing in silence as her coffin was carried up the steps and into the court.

Roberts described Ginsburg’s affect on American law and her inspiration to women, calling her a ‘rock star.’

‘It has been said that Ruth wanted to be an opera virtuoso, but became a rock star instead. But she chose the law, subjected to discrimination in law school and the job market because she was a woman, Ruth would grow to become the leading advocate fighting such discrimination in court. She found her stage right behind me in our courtroom,’ he said.

‘There she won famous victories that helped move our nation closer to equal justice under law, to the extent that women are now a majority in law schools, not simply a handful. Later she became a star on the bench where she sat for 27 years. Dissenting opinions will steer the court for decades. They are written with the unaffected case of precision,’ he noted.

‘Her voice in court and in our conference room was soft, but when she spoke, people listened. Among the words that best describe Ruth, tough, brave, a fighter, a winner, but also thoughtful, careful, compassionate, honest. When it came to opera, insightful, passionate. When it came to sports, clueless,’ he added as people chuckled.

A 2016 portrait of Ginsburg by artist Constance P. Beaty was on display during the brief ceremony.

‘Today we stand in mourning of the American hero, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,’ the Rabbi Lauren Holtzbatt said.

Holtzbatt paid tribute to Ginsburg’s status as an American feminist icon.

‘To be born into the world that does not see you, that does not believe in your potential, that does not give you a path for opportunity, or a clear path for education and despite this, to be able to see beyond the world you are in, to imagine that something can be different. That is the job of a prophet. And it is the rare prophet who not only imagines a new world, but also makes that new world a reality in her lifetime. This was the brilliance and vision of justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,’ she said.

She touted Ginsburg as a ‘role model to women and girls of all ages, who now know that no office is out of reach for their dreams: whether that is to serve in the highest court of our land or closer to home.’

The entrance to the courtroom, along with Ginsburg’s chair and place on the bench next to Roberts, have been draped in black, a longstanding court custom. 

Her coffin rested on a Lincoln catafalque, on loan from Congress, that once held President Abraham Lincoln’s remains. 

After the private ceremony inside the court, Ginsburg’s casket will be on public view from 11 am to 10 pm Wednesday and 9 am to 10 pm Thursday. 

Ginsburg also will become the first woman to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol when her coffin lies in Statutory Hall on Friday. She will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery next week, where her husband Marty Ginsburg lies in rest. 

Since her death on Friday from colon cancer, thousands laid flowers, notes, candles and stuffed animals on the court’s step to pay homage to a woman who found fame late in life, known as the ‘Notorious RBG’ for her fiery dissents. 

Court workers removed them to make way for her casket’s arrival on Wednesday. 

Meanwhile Trump said he will announce his nomination to replace Ginsburg on the court at 5 pm on Saturday.

‘I’m getting very close to having a final decision made, very close,’ Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday evening.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett is reported to be at the top of his short list with Judge Barbara Lagoa in second. Trump has vowed to pick a woman to replace Ginsburg, a feminist icon and hero to liberals. 

Whomever he picks, the president is expected to shift the court to the right with his decision. 

Saturday’s announcement will come shortly before the president leaves for Pennsylvania, where he will hold a rally in Middletown in the crucial 2020 battleground state.

Given the close proximity between the election and the nomination process, the Supreme Court is highly likely to become a political hot potato in the presidential race. 

But Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday would not promise a vote on the nomination before the election.

McConnell said he would wait for the person to come out of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings and then set the date for the vote on the Senate floor.

‘When the nomination comes out of committee, then I’ll decide when and how to proceed,’ he said after the Senate Republicans’ lunch on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

He would not address if that vote would be before or after November 3, when voters decide who will be the next president of the United States.  

President Trump has pushed for a vote on his nominee before the general election but McConnell could be more peckish on the timing to help out his senators in tight re-election contests who would prefer to deal with the issue after the voters go to the polls.

Timing in the Senate is also tough. There would be less than 40 days before the election to complete the process when most nominations take at least 70 days. Traditionally a nominee holds meetings with senators, has a confirmation hearing that could take two or three days, has to be voted out of committee and then has the final vote on the Senate floor.

Most Republican senators have said they back the president’s right to move forward with a replacement for Ginsburg instead of waiting for the winner of November’s contest to name her replacement.

Senator Mitt Romney – the last remaining Republican holdout – said he would back the president and vote for a nominee in an election year.

‘I intend to follow the Constitution and precedent in considering the president’s nominee. If the nominee reaches the Senate floor, I intend to vote based upon their qualifications,’ Romney said in a statement Tuesday morning.

Trump praised Romney, who he has blasted in the past for voting for one article of impeachment against him.

‘He was very good, today, I have to tell you, he was good. Now I’m happy. Thank you, Mitt,’ the president said at a rally in Pennsylvania Tuesday night. 

The White House, meanwhile, would not address the timing of a Senate vote or if they thought they had enough votes to confirm the president’s pick. While enough Republican senators have said they support moving forward in the nomination process, not all of them have promised to vote for the nominee, who has yet to be named.  

‘We go about this the way we always have putting forward a constitution abiding textualist, originalist that we believe the American people will appreciate and get through the approval process,’ White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said at her press briefing on Tuesday.

And she wouldn’t address if Republicans have the 51 votes needed for confirmation. 

‘I haven’t spoke to him about the vote count,’ she said of her talks with the president. ‘We believe the Republicans will remained unified.’

Romney was the Democrats’ last chance to pick off a Republican senator to support them in their quest to keep Ginsburg’s court seat open until after the November election.

Even if Romney had sided with Democrats, the odds of their being able to keep the nomination off the Senate floor would be slim given only two other Republican senators said the nomination should wait. A total of four GOP lawmakers would need to defect.

Romney, a frequent critic of President Trump who voted for one article of impeachment against him, told reporters on Capitol Hill there is historic precedent for when one party controls the White House and the Senate for their nominations to be confirmed.

‘I think there’s some perception on the part of some writers and others that gee what happened with Merrick Garland and some others was unfair. I don’t agree with that,’ he said in reference to Barack Obama’s 2016 Supreme Court nominee. 

‘I think at this stage its appropriate to look at the constitution and to look at the precedent which has existed since the beginning of our country’s history. In the circumstance where a nominee of a president is from a different party than the Senate then, more often than not, the Senate does not confirm. So the Garland decision was consistent with that. On the other hand, when there’s a nominee of a party that is in the same party as the Senate, then typically they do confirm. So the Garland decision was consistent with that. And the decision to proceed now with President Trump’s nominee is also consistent with history. I came down on the side of the institution and precedent as I’ve studied it. And, and made the decision on that basis,’ he noted. 

He declined to say if he would change his mind if Democrat Joe Biden wins the November election. 

‘I’m not going to get into the particulars of who wins and who doesn’t. There are there are many possibilities that we could go through. I’ve indicated that what I intend to do, is to proceed with the consideration process and if a nominee actually reaches the floor, then I will vote based upon the qualifications of that nominee,’ he said. 

Although Trump hasn’t named his pick to the court, the nomination process appears to be all wrapped up with enough Republican senators on board to ensure the nominee gets a vote on the Senate floor.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said Trump ‘has the votes’ to confirm his pick after two key Republican senators said they would back the president. 

He said the timing of the confirmation vote was up to McConnell but he’s confident the Judiciary panel could hold the hearings it needed in time for a vote before Election Day.

‘I’ll leave it up to Mitch. I’m confident we can have a hearing that will allow the nominee to be submitted to the floor before Election Day. Following the precedents of the Senate, I think we can do that. I’ll tell you more about the hearing when we get a nomination Saturday, if that’s when it is,’ Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

And he shrugged off the request of some senators to skip the confirmation hearings, which could become contentious amid Democratic objections over holding them in an election year instead of waiting to see who wins the White House in November. 

‘I think it’s important to the country to have a hearing,’ he said.

Graham is a part of a group of Republican senators pushing to hold the vote before the November 3 election.  

‘We’ve got the votes to confirm Justice Ginsburg’s replacement before the election. We’re going to move forward in the committee, we’re going to report the nomination out of the committee to the floor of the United States Senate so we can vote before the election. Now, that’s the constitutional process,’ he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday night.

Graham is one of many Republican senators who did not back then President Barack Obama’s nomination to the Supreme Court in the 2016 election year but said they would back Trump’s pick in this election year.

‘I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination,’ the senator said four years ago when arguing against the Garland nomination.

Graham said his stance changed after the heated confirmation process for Trump’s last nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. 

‘They said they tried to destroy Brett Kavanaugh so they could fill the seat – they were dumb enough to say that. I’ve seen this movie before. It’s not going to work, it didn’t work with Kavanaugh,’ he told Fox News.

Graham’s confident statements came after Iowa Sen Chuck Grassley, the former Judiciary Committee chair, and Colorado Sen Cory Gardner confirmed that they will back a hearing for Trump’s nominee.  

It had been speculated that Grassley could try to block the nomination process because he’d previously opposed filling Supreme Court vacancies during an election year.  

‘The Constitution gives the Senate that authority, and the American people’s voices in the most recent election couldn’t be clearer,’ Grassley said in a statement.

Grassley was chairman of the Judiciary Committee when Republicans blocked Obama’s pick in 2016, when he joined McConnell in arguing that it was best to let voters decide who should fill the Supreme Court seat.

The senator maintained that stance as recently as this summer, telling reporters that he would still hold that position if he were chairman. But now he says he supports the president.

Gardner’s stance was also in question because he faces a tough re-election race in his home state, and some thought he could side with Democrats to boost his standing among moderate voters. 

But Gardner said: ‘When a President exercises constitutional authority to nominate a judge for the Supreme Court vacancy, the Senate must decide how to best fulfill its constitutional duty of advice and consent.

‘I have and will continue to support judicial nominees who will protect our Constitution, not legislate from the bench, and uphold the law. Should a qualified nominee who meets this criteria be put forward, I will vote to confirm.’

The news of both senators preparing to back Trump came as a blow to the Democrats fighting to block Trump and McConnell’s plans to rush the court appointment.  

The nomination will come just six weeks before the election and has sparked fierce debate, particularly after Ginsburg – a beloved liberal icon – made her last wishes known.

Ginsburg, who died Friday from complications from colon cancer, dictated a statement to her granddaughter Clara Spera before her death, saying: ‘My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.’ 

Democrats have used her statement and Republican actions in 2016 – when they wouldn’t move forward with Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, citing election year politics – as the basis of their argument for holding off on confirming a new judge.   

The Republican argument at the time was that the position should not be filled until a new president was elected by the American people – a standard set by the Republicans that the Democrats now argue the party must continue to honor.   

Two GOP senators – Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins – have said the nomination should wait until after the November 3 election. 

Trump criticized both of them for their stance. Collins, notably, did not rule out voting for the president’s nominee if it came to the floor this year. She is in a tough re-election campaign. Murkowski doesn’t face voters again until 2022.  

Republican Senator Ted Cruz defended his colleagues’ decision to support Trump’s nomination after failing to support Obama’s.

‘Everybody has changed their position,’ the GOP senator from Texas told CBS’ ‘This Morning.’ 

‘Every Democrat has flipped,’ he added. ‘There’s a reason for that. Both sides believe something fundamentally different about Supreme Court justices. The Democrats and Joe Biden have promised to nominate liberal activist judges.’

He noted Republicans – both President Trump and Senate Republicans – ran for office promising to name conservative judges to the courts, adding that since the GOP kept control of the Senate in the 2018 midterms, voters gave them the nod of approval to confirm a justice. 

‘President Trump ran promising to nominate principled constitutionalists to the court. The American people elected him.The American people elected a Republican majority three times in 2014, 2016, 2018. The Republican majority in the Senate ran promising to confirm constitutionalist judges,’ Cruz said.

In March 2016, Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland,a moderate jurist, to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

But McConnell refused to bring Garland’s nomination to the Senate floor, saying the winner of the November election should get to pick the next justice even though the contest was eight months away.

Now McConnell and most of his Republican senators say they will back Trump’s nominee, noting the circumstances are different from four years ago since their party controls both the White House and the Senate.

‘We’re going to vote on this nomination on this floor,’ McConnell said Monday in a Senate floor speech.  

Unfazed by the intense pressure to delay the nomination process, Trump has said he is ‘strongly considering’ five candidates to replace Ginsburg, with Barrett emerging as a favorite.  

Trump met with Barrett, a judge on the Seventh Circuit and mother of seven who adopted two children from Haiti, at the White House on Monday. 

Bloomberg reported that the president is ‘leaning toward’ Barrett for the nomination but is also planning to meet with another contender, Lagoa, sometime this week.  

Sources told the outlet that Lagoa, a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and former justice on the Florida Supreme Court, is the only other person being seriously considered for the job, but she is a ‘distant second’ to Barrett.     

President Donald Trump finally responded to the U.S. hitting the grim milestone of 200,000 COVID-19 deaths calling it ‘a shame’ after ignoring the question when a reporter first asked him about it. 

Trump, leaving the White House Tuesday for a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania rally, was asked by a female reporter why he hadn’t commented on the 200,000-plus death count. 

The president leaned in to listen, with Marine One’s engine humming in the background, and once the reporter asked her question louder he moved on. ‘Go ahead, uhhh, anybody else?’ the president said. 

Then another reporter asked him the same thing. ‘I think it’s a shame,’ Trump then responded. 

‘If we didn’t do it properly and didn’t do it right, you’d have two and a half million deaths.’ 

The president was using an estimate of how many would die from the coronavirus had no precautions – such as mask-wearing, closures and social distancing – been. taken. 

He then continued to blast China for releasing the virus. 

‘They should never let this spread all over the world and it’s a terrible thing,’ Trump said, pointing reporters to taped remarks he made before the United Nations General Assembly earlier Tuesday.   

Trump’s rival, Democrat Joe Biden, made repeated references to the nation crossing the 200,000 throughout the day.   

Biden tweeted out a large image of the number 200,000 with white on black, writing: ‘It didn’t have to be this bad.’

The image contained the number of dead listed state-by-state. 

In another missive, Biden wrote: ‘200,000 Americans have died from this virus. It’s a staggering number that’s hard to wrap your head around. But behind every COVID-19 death is a family and community that will never again be the same. There’s a devastating human toll to this pandemic — and we can’t forget that.’

His comments came as media organizations around the country began marking the milestone.

At the White House, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany blasted reporters who asked about Trump’s comments at a rally Monday night that ‘It affects virtually nobody,’ adding: ‘It’s an amazing thing.”  

‘It affects elderly people. Elderly people with heart problems and other problems. If they have other problems, that’s what it really affects. That’s it,’ Trump said, noting the disease primarily hits the elderly and those with preexisting conditions – a huge number of Americans.

‘You know, in some states, thousands of people, nobody young [dies of the disease]. Below the age of 18, like, nobody. They have a strong immune system, who knows?’ he continued. ‘You look – take your hat off to the young, because they have a hell of an immune system. But it affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing.’

Then Trump added a political rejoinder: ‘By the way, open your schools, everybody. Open your schools,’ he said. 

Pressed on the comments, McEnany said: ‘The president is telling people the truth.’

She accused CNN’s Jim Acosta of taking the comments ‘out of context’ – although he noted that he had referenced that Trump was talking about young people when he made the comment.    

‘The president is telling people the truth,’ she said. She told Acosta: ‘ You’re right that he was referring to young people. You are taking it out of context.’ He countered that children can still get sick form the disease and spread it in the community. 

McEnany reread some of Trump’s comments and said they were ‘factually true’ and pointed to several states with zero pediatric deaths.

‘COVID has a .01 per cent mortality for people under the age of 18. So it is not a disease that affects young people in the same way as older people, which is the exact point the president was making last night,’ she said. 

Speaking to the 200,000 death toll, she pointed to an early model that showed ‘the prospect of 2 million people potentially perishing.’

‘The fact that we have come nowhere near that number is a testament to this president taking immediate action,’ she said.

‘We grieve when even one life is lost,’ she said. 

More than 200,000 Americans have now died from COVID-19 – a bleak milestone reached on Tuesday that comes even as the national death rate continues to decline. 

The number of Americans dying from coronavirus per day, based on a weekly average, is now at just over 760. 

It is down from the peak 2,000 deaths being reported per day back in April. 

While deaths continue to decline across the country, fatalities related to COVID-19 are a lagging indicator and can potentially rise several weeks after new cases. 

The national infection rate started increasing just over a week ago, which is a rise health experts have attributed to some schools reopening and parties over the Labor Day holiday. 

The average number of COVID-19 cases being reported per day is now at just under 40,000 with total infection in the US topping 6.8 million. 

Before this uptick, cases, on average, had been trending downwards nationally since July when about 70,000 infections were being reported daily. 

California, Texas and Florida – the three most populous US states – have recorded the most coronavirus infections and have long surpassed the state of New York, which was the epicenter of the outbreak earlier this year.

The southern states of Texas and Florida contributed the most deaths in the US in the past two weeks and were closely followed by California.  

Deaths in those three states are currently declining. 

The states that saw the largest increases in deaths in the last week were Arkansas, Kansas and Virginia. 

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is predicting that deaths will rise to more 378,000 by the end of the year. 

The model forecasts that more than 114,000 lives could be saved if the majority of Americans wear masks but epidemiologists have already warned that mask-wearing is already declining across the country. 

The death rate projected by the IHME model, which has been cited by the White House Coronavirus Task Force, would more than triple the current daily death rate to to 3,000 per day in December.

During the early months of the pandemic, 200,000 deaths was regarded by many as the maximum number of lives likely to be lost in the United States to the virus. 

‘The idea of 200,000 deaths is really very sobering, in some respects stunning,’ Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, told CNN. 

President Donald Trump on Monday said he had done a phenomenal job on the pandemic.

‘It affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing,’ Trump told supporters at a Swanton, Ohio, campaign rally Monday night. 

‘It affects… elderly people with heart problems and other problems – if they have other problems that’s what it really affects, that’s it.’ 

Trump has admitted to playing down the danger of the coronavirus early on because he did not want to ‘create a panic.’ 

President Donald Trump finally responded to the U.S. hitting the grim milestone of 200,000 COVID-19 deaths calling it ‘a shame’ after ignoring the question when a reporter first asked him about it. 

Trump, leaving the White House Tuesday for a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania rally, was asked by a female reporter why he hadn’t commented on the 200,000-plus death count. 

The president leaned in to listen, with Marine One’s engine humming in the background, and once the reporter asked her question louder he moved on. ‘Go ahead, uhhh, anybody else?’ the president said. 

Then another reporter asked him the same thing. ‘I think it’s a shame,’ Trump then responded. 

‘If we didn’t do it properly and didn’t do it right, you’d have two and a half million deaths.’ 

The president was using an estimate of how many would die from the coronavirus had no precautions – such as mask-wearing, closures and social distancing – been. taken. 

He then continued to blast China for releasing the virus. 

‘They should never let this spread all over the world and it’s a terrible thing,’ Trump said, pointing reporters to taped remarks he made before the United Nations General Assembly earlier Tuesday.   

Trump’s rival, Democrat Joe Biden, made repeated references to the nation crossing the 200,000 throughout the day.   

Biden tweeted out a large image of the number 200,000 with white on black, writing: ‘It didn’t have to be this bad.’

The image contained the number of dead listed state-by-state. 

In another missive, Biden wrote: ‘200,000 Americans have died from this virus. It’s a staggering number that’s hard to wrap your head around. But behind every COVID-19 death is a family and community that will never again be the same. There’s a devastating human toll to this pandemic — and we can’t forget that.’

His comments came as media organizations around the country began marking the milestone.

At the White House, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany blasted reporters who asked about Trump’s comments at a rally Monday night that ‘It affects virtually nobody,’ adding: ‘It’s an amazing thing.”  

‘It affects elderly people. Elderly people with heart problems and other problems. If they have other problems, that’s what it really affects. That’s it,’ Trump said, noting the disease primarily hits the elderly and those with preexisting conditions – a huge number of Americans.

‘You know, in some states, thousands of people, nobody young [dies of the disease]. Below the age of 18, like, nobody. They have a strong immune system, who knows?’ he continued. ‘You look – take your hat off to the young, because they have a hell of an immune system. But it affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing.’

Then Trump added a political rejoinder: ‘By the way, open your schools, everybody. Open your schools,’ he said. 

Pressed on the comments, McEnany said: ‘The president is telling people the truth.’

She accused CNN’s Jim Acosta of taking the comments ‘out of context’ – although he noted that he had referenced that Trump was talking about young people when he made the comment.    

‘The president is telling people the truth,’ she said. She told Acosta: ‘ You’re right that he was referring to young people. You are taking it out of context.’ He countered that children can still get sick form the disease and spread it in the community. 

McEnany reread some of Trump’s comments and said they were ‘factually true’ and pointed to several states with zero pediatric deaths.

‘COVID has a .01 per cent mortality for people under the age of 18. So it is not a disease that affects young people in the same way as older people, which is the exact point the president was making last night,’ she said. 

Speaking to the 200,000 death toll, she pointed to an early model that showed ‘the prospect of 2 million people potentially perishing.’

‘The fact that we have come nowhere near that number is a testament to this president taking immediate action,’ she said.

‘We grieve when even one life is lost,’ she said. 

More than 200,000 Americans have now died from COVID-19 – a bleak milestone reached on Tuesday that comes even as the national death rate continues to decline. 

The number of Americans dying from coronavirus per day, based on a weekly average, is now at just over 760. 

It is down from the peak 2,000 deaths being reported per day back in April. 

While deaths continue to decline across the country, fatalities related to COVID-19 are a lagging indicator and can potentially rise several weeks after new cases. 

The national infection rate started increasing just over a week ago, which is a rise health experts have attributed to some schools reopening and parties over the Labor Day holiday. 

The average number of COVID-19 cases being reported per day is now at just under 40,000 with total infection in the US topping 6.8 million. 

Before this uptick, cases, on average, had been trending downwards nationally since July when about 70,000 infections were being reported daily. 

California, Texas and Florida – the three most populous US states – have recorded the most coronavirus infections and have long surpassed the state of New York, which was the epicenter of the outbreak earlier this year.

The southern states of Texas and Florida contributed the most deaths in the US in the past two weeks and were closely followed by California.  

Deaths in those three states are currently declining. 

The states that saw the largest increases in deaths in the last week were Arkansas, Kansas and Virginia. 

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is predicting that deaths will rise to more 378,000 by the end of the year. 

The model forecasts that more than 114,000 lives could be saved if the majority of Americans wear masks but epidemiologists have already warned that mask-wearing is already declining across the country. 

The death rate projected by the IHME model, which has been cited by the White House Coronavirus Task Force, would more than triple the current daily death rate to to 3,000 per day in December.

During the early months of the pandemic, 200,000 deaths was regarded by many as the maximum number of lives likely to be lost in the United States to the virus. 

‘The idea of 200,000 deaths is really very sobering, in some respects stunning,’ Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, told CNN. 

President Donald Trump on Monday said he had done a phenomenal job on the pandemic.

‘It affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing,’ Trump told supporters at a Swanton, Ohio, campaign rally Monday night. 

‘It affects… elderly people with heart problems and other problems – if they have other problems that’s what it really affects, that’s it.’ 

Trump has admitted to playing down the danger of the coronavirus early on because he did not want to ‘create a panic.’