President Trump laid into the fake news media on Sunday for their false reporting about a nationwide Wuhan coronavirus website that Google is creating in partnership with the federal government. Several news outlets erroneously accused the president of lying and misleading the public about the existence and scope of the project.
At a press conference last week, President Trump announced that Google was working on a website to help screen people and coordinate testing for the coronavirus.
"I want to thank Google. Google is helping to develop a website, it’s going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location," Trump said during a press conference on Friday.
After the president's remarks, Google, headquartered in San Francisco's Bay Area, announced on Twitter that its subsidiary, Verily, was indeed working on "a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing" and would be testing the tool in the Bay Area with the hopes of expanding it "more broadly over time."
Statement from Verily: "We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing. Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time.
— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) March 13, 2020
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Several media outlets were quick to call the president a liar, prompting Google to clarify that it was indeed partnering with the federal government to create a nationwide coronavirus website.
“Google is partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk and testing information. (2/6)
— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) March 15, 2020
President Trump thanked Google for substantiating his comments regarding the nationwide coronavirus website and tore into the fake news media for their baseless reporting.
"I want to thank the people at Google and Google Communications because as you know they substantiated what I said on Friday," Trump began. "The head of Google, who is a great gentleman said, called us and he apologized. I don't know where the press got their fake news, but they got it someplace. As you know, this is from Google. They put out a release and you guys can figure it out yourselves and how that got out. And I'm sure you guys will apologize, but it would be great if we could get really give the news correctly. It'd be so, so wonderful."
President Trump calls out the Fake News that said Google would not be helping with a Nationwide Coronavirus Website
pic.twitter.com/SrccUWjdKo
President Trump's early decision to ban travel to China is credited for keeping the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the United States low, relative to other countries. But the media want to make Trump look incompetent over his response to the coronavirus, even if they have to make up fake news to do it.
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