WELLINGTON, August 18 (Online): Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday slapped down Donald Trump\u2019s talk of an out-of-control coronavirus “surge” in New Zealand as “patently wrong”.
\nShe expressed dismay after the US president exaggerated the new virus outbreak in New Zealand as a “huge surge” that Americans would do well to avoid.
\n“Anyone who is following,” Ardern said, “will quite easily see that New Zealand\u2019s nine cases in a day does not compare to the United States\u2019 tens of thousands.”
\n“Obviously, it\u2019s patently wrong,” she added of Trump\u2019s remarks, in unusually blunt criticism from an American ally.
\nNew Zealand had been hailed as a global success story after eradicating local transmission of the virus and Ardern was lauded as the “anti-Trump”.
\nBut the recent discovery of a cluster in Auckland forced the country\u2019s largest city back into lockdown.
\nAt an election rally in Minnesota on Monday, Trump jumped on that development as evidence his critics — who held up New Zealand as an example — were wrong.
\n“You see what is going on in New Zealand,” Trump told supporters.
\n“They beat it; they beat it. It was like front page (news), they beat it because they wanted to show me something.”
\nCiting a “big surge in New Zealand”, Trump added: “It\u2019s terrible. We don\u2019t want that.”
\nNew Zealand, with a population of five million, has around 1,300 coronavirus cases since the pandemic began roughly eight months ago and around 70 active cases.
\nThe United States, on the other hand, is the hardest-hit nation in the world with well over five million cases and more than 170,000 deaths.
\nIt is not the first time that Trump and Ardern — a relatively young, centre-left leader — have clashed.
\nShortly after her stunning election win in 2017, Trump met her at a summit in Vietnam and joked she had “caused a lot of upset in her country”.
\n“You know, no one marched when I was elected,” she retorted, referring to the protests that followed Trump\u2019s victory in 2016.
\nBoth leaders are heading into elections in the coming weeks, and for both, trading barbs is likely to play well with supporters.
\nArdern has been forced to postpone the elections by a month because of the latest outbreak, putting her sizable lead in the polls at risk.
\nTrump is trailing Democrat Joe Biden in the polls and facing fierce criticism over his handling of the pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WELLINGTON, August 18 (Online): Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday slapped down Donald Trump\u2019s talk of an out-of-control coronavirus “surge” in New Zealand as “patently wrong”. She expressed dismay after the US president exaggerated the new virus outbreak in New Zealand as a “huge surge” that Americans would do well to avoid. “Anyone who is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139263,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n