| March 20, 2020 03:12 PM
The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg slammed President Trump on Friday by claiming that U.S. citizens wouldn’t be “stuck” inside their homes if the country had better leadership.
“The interesting thing about all of this is whatever channel you’re watching, you’re still watching from home. You’re watching from inside your house,” Goldberg said via Skype, as she is staying home amid coronavirus fears. “Because a pandemic has happened, and you are stuck, and whatever side you’re on, you understand that when you have leadership, you would not — you would not be stuck in your house.”
Earlier this week, the actress criticized Trump for using the term “Chinese virus,” agreeing with some of his critics that the phrase is xenophobic.
"People, as we've seen, people start punching people — Asian folks out. They will attack," Goldberg said. “So we need to stop calling it or labeling it like it's they did it to us. Mother Nature really did this to us."
Trump has insisted on using the term in public remarks and social media, calling it “accurate” because the illness is believed to have originated in China.
"I didn't appreciate the fact that China was saying that our military gave it to them. Our military did not give it to anybody," he told reporters Wednesday.
"China was putting out information, which was false, that our military gave this to them. That was false. And rather than having an argument, I said, I had to call it where it came from. It did come from China. So, I think it's a very accurate term," he added.
There have been around 265,495 confirmed coronavirus cases around the world, 87,363 recoveries, and 11,147 deaths, according to the latest reading by the Johns Hopkins University tracker. In the United States, there have been 16,000 cases, 121 recoveries, and 210 deaths.