US election 2020: Donald Trump claims doctors are overstating virus cases to get more money

Donald Trump has pushed a baseless conspiracy theory among a litany of falsehoods for personal gain during a wild rally speech today.

US President Donald Trump has pushed the baseless conspiracy theory that American healthcare workers are overstating the number of coronavirus deaths the country is suffering to get more money.

That claim was just one example among a litany of falsehoods and bizarre moments during Mr Trump’s election campaign rally in Waterford, Michigan today.

“You know, our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID. You know that, right? Our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, ‘I’m sorry, everybody dies of COVID,’” the President claimed.

“But in Germany, and other places, if you have a heart attack or you have cancer, you’re terminally ill, you catch COVID, they say you died of cancer. You died of a heart attack.

“With us, when in doubt, choose COVID. It’s true. No, it’s true.”

The crowd laughed at this point.

“Now they’ll say, ‘It’s terrible, what he said.’ But that’s true. It’s like, $2000 more,” Mr Trump added, pointing to the media pen.

In the US, Medicare pays hospitals about three times more for a patient with a respiratory condition who needs to go on a ventilator than for one who does not. That is a standard policy which has nothing at all to do with the pandemic.

As I’m sure you are aware, people with severe coronavirus infections are often placed on ventilators, because otherwise they will die.

Under stimulus legislation passed months ago, and signed into law by Mr Trump, Medicare is currently paying hospitals 20 per cent more than its standard rate for patients who have the coronavirus. That is a real thing.

There is no evidence – none whatsoever – that healthcare workers are wrongly attributing patients’ deaths to the coronavirus out of greed.

Let me stress that again. No. Evidence. Whatsoever.

There is also no evidence that America’s coronavirus death toll, which currently stands at 229,000, is overstated. In fact if anything, data on excess deaths throughout the US suggests the pandemic’s toll has been understated.

This is not the first time Mr Trump has floated the conspiracy theory.

A week ago, organisations representing healthcare workers felt compelled to push back, with the American College of Physicians calling it a “reprehensible attack on physicians’ ethics and professionalism”.

RELATED: Trump complains about media covering the virus

Donald Trump speaking at the rally. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

While we’re on the subject of the coronavirus, it is worth noting Mr Trump once again complained that the media was covering the pandemic too much.

“You know, everything is COVID, COVID, COVID. You know that. You turn on the news, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID. And you know, cases are up. Why are cases up? Because we test more than anyone in history,” he said.

The US reported more than 88,000 new infections yesterday, its highest number since the start of the pandemic. The nation’s daily average has spiked sharply in recent weeks, and it, too, is currently at a record level.

“Many countries don’t test at all. Many countries don’t test at all. But we test more,” Mr Trump continued.

“Deaths are way down, people are getting better. I’m an example of it. My wife is an example of it. And Barron Trump! Young. Very, young, 14. He’s my very tall 14-year-old boy.”

Having listened to the President’s rhetoric on COVID-19 for a while now, I think he is genuinely under the impression that countries like Australia, with relatively low rates of infection, don’t do any testing. Which I don’t need to tell you is false.

So is his assertion that deaths are “way down”. Mr Trump’s son, Donald Jr, gave us another version of that claim during an interview on Fox News last night, saying deaths from the virus were down to “almost nothing”.

In reality, the US is currently suffering about a thousand coronavirus deaths per day, and there are fears that figure will rise further in the coming weeks, as fatalities tend to lag behind any increase in cases.

RELATED: Donald Jr falsely claims virus deaths are at ‘almost nothing’

More Testing equals more Cases. We have best testing. Deaths WAY DOWN. Hospitals have great additional capacity! Doing much better than Europe. Therapeutics working!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2020

Mr Trump repeated his frequent claim that a vaccine will be available to the general public soon, though he said it wasn’t needed anyway.

“Without it, we’re still rounding the corner. We have it, but without it, we round the corner,” said the President.

“And it will be free. We’re doing the vaccine free. And the reason is, this wasn’t your fault, this wasn’t anyone’s fault, this was China’s fault. Just remember it.

“Our vaccine will eradicate the virus much more quickly, and end the pandemic quickly, quickly, quickly, because we want to have our life restored, just to normal, that’s all we want. That’s all we want, normal.

“And that’s what the rest of the world wants. Look what’s happening in Europe, it’s terrible.”

He is right about Europe, by the way.

“What China has done to this world. And just remember, just remember it,” said Mr Trump.

“Next year will be the greatest economic year in the history of our country. You see what’s happening. Thirty-three per cent, nobody can believe it. Nobody can believe it. They don’t like talking about it. You know, they don’t like talking about it.”

He pointed to the media pen again at that point.

Mr Trump was referring to yesterday’s economic figures, which showed America’s GDP grew by a whopping 7.4 per cent in the third quarter (an annualised rate of 33 per cent) – by the far the biggest number since reliable records began in the aftermath of World War II.

That followed a 9 per cent drop in GDP in the second quarter. The US economy remains 3.5 per cent smaller than it was at the end of last year, before the pandemic wrecked it.

RELATED: US recovery boosted by record GDP growth

The scene in Waterford Township at Mr Trump’s rally. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

Mr Trump transitioned into a call for state governors to reopen their economies, despite the spread of the virus.

“You have to get back, you have to open up your states,” he said.

“We’ve got to get our governor to open up our state here, don’t we? Oh don't worry, on November 4, they’ll announce all these states, all these Democrat-run states will be open.”

This is a variation of Mr Trump’s frequent prediction that the media will stop focusing on the pandemic on November 4, the day after the election.

The implication being that we are only reporting on a disease that continues to kill a thousand Americans each day, and that state governors are only enforcing public health rules, in an effort to harm his re-election.

The President has been feuding with Michigan’s governor, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, for months over her handling of the pandemic.

The state was in lockdown at one point, though Ms Whitmer lifted her stay-at-home order and allowed most businesses to reopen at the start of June.

Back to the rally. The crowd started to chant “lock her up”, as most of Mr Trump’s audiences do whenever he mentions Ms Whitmer.

“Not me,” he said, shrugging as the chant erupted around him.

“Not me, you see. They blame me every time that happens. Every time I mention her name, crooked Hillary’s name, Joe Biden’s name, frankly.

“And where’s Hunter? Where’s Hunter?

“Hunter’s done very well for an unemployed person, right? For years, for years unemployed, and then he hit paydirt. His father became vice president. And Joe hit paydirt too, that’s part of the problem.”

Mr Trump has repeatedly alleged that Joe Biden illegally profited from his son Hunter’s business interests overseas when he was vice president.

There is no evidence to support that claim, though there is plenty of proof that Hunter himself tried to profit off his father’s name.

Nevertheless, Mr Trump has labelled his opponent “a criminal” and pushed the US Department of Justice to launch an investigation into him before election day.

The President’s Biden accusations came up a few times during the rally.

“You don’t hear about this though, because they refuse – in fact, they just turned the cameras off,” Mr Trump said, pointing once again at the media pen.

“You see, you can’t have a scandal if they don’t report it. So the Times, and the Washington Post, and all of the fake news CNN, look, they turned their cameras off.”

The crowd jeered and started to chant “CNN sucks”.

“It’s a terrible thing. They turn the damn cameras off when – you know what happened? They go, ‘We’re here live at Joe Biden’s-’, you know, he's doing a thing, there’s nobody there. I’m looking, they’re showing the sea of people, 25,000 people. They’re showing, it’s like a sea. And the other one, it’s like, nobody there.”

The Biden campaign has been conducting small events with strict social distancing, in accordance with local health guidelines.

Mr Trump’s claim about the news networks turning their cameras off because they don’t like what he’s saying is one he makes at pretty much every rally.

As someone who works in the media, I can tell you it is nonsense. Even if a network does not carry an entire rally live (most don’t), it still records the whole thing.

One of the ways you can tell this claim is false is that the footage of Mr Trump saying the media’s cameras have been turned off is brought to you by those very same cameras.

No, the media does not stop filming Donald Trump when he says something reporters won’t like. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

At another point in the rally, the President brought up the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, and claimed she was unable to pronounce her own name.

“Biden’s running mate, America’s most liberal senator, she makes Bernie look like a conservative. Crazy Bernie is like a conservative compared to her,” he said.

“Kamala. You have to pronounce it exactly right, otherwise she gets very upset. Even though she can’t pronounce it right!”

The crowd booed at the President’s first mention of Ms Harris, then laughed appreciatively at his joke.

There has been a smidgen of controversy about the pronunciation of Ms Harris’s Indian first name lately.

Her Republican Senate colleague David Perdue, who has spent the last three years working alongside her in Congress, deliberately mispronounced it at a rally recently to get a laugh from the crowd. That sparked a backlash online.

Mr Trump went on to mention that one of his supporters in the media, Fox News host Laura Ingraham, was somewhere in the audience. He joked that she was being “politically correct” because she was wearing a face mask.

“I do believe Laura Ingraham is here, someplace. Where is Laura, where is she? Where is Laura?” the President asked, eventually spotting her.

“I can’t recognise you. Is that a mask? No way. Are you wearing a mask? I’ve never seen her in a mask, look at you. Whoa, she’s being very politically correct.”

I’ll wrap this up on a lighter note, with one of Mr Trump’s most insignificant recurring fibs.

“Twelve years ago, I was named man of the year in Michigan. Can you believe it? Long before I thought about running. And I got up, I made a speech, I said, ‘You’re losing all your car business,’” he said.

“Now we’re bringing it all back. You have many, many factories under construction, expansions of existing.”

The claim about a bunch of new car factories being under construction has been fact-checked repeatedly, and is false.

However I mainly mention this quote because of the President’s amusing claim that he won a “man of the year” award in Michigan years ago. It’s something he says whenever he happens to be addressing a crowd in the state.

No such award exists. Fact checkers have tried to figure out what Mr Trump is referring to, and the best they’ve come up with is a dinner held by the Oakland Republican Party back in 2013. Mr Trump was not given any award at the dinner, but he did give a speech about the car industry going to Mexico.

And there you have it.

Most of Mr Trump’s rallies in recent weeks have contained a comparable number of falsehoods, but in the helter-skelter of live campaign coverage, it can be hard to do anything that even approaches a thorough fact-check.

Hopefully this chance to step back and look at one of the President’s speeches more closely has been instructive.

We’ll be back to a live blog tomorrow, with both presidential candidates planning a flurry of activity. Do tune in.