Kristin Urquiza, whose father died of the coronavirus, on Thursday said that her father’s life could have been spared if President Trump had told the public what he told journalist Bob Woodward about the pandemic last February.
“That betrayal of my father and my country is even more clear now. The president’s lies are undeniable and inexcusable,” Urquiza told reporters on a call with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign.
“If Donald Trump had told the American people in public what he had told Bob Woodward in private, thousands of lives could have been spared, including my dad. How many families right now are missing a loved one because of Trump’s failure?” she added.
Urquiza, whose father Mark Anthony was a Trump supporter, previously slammed the president’s response to the pandemic last month at the Democratic National Convention.
“His only preexisting condition was trusting Donald Trump,” she said. “Donald Trump may not have caused the coronavirus, but his dishonesty and his irresponsible actions made it so much worse.”
Her obituary for her father, in which she criticized Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey‘s (R) handling of the virus, went viral in July.
Urquiza’s latest comments come as Trump faces fallout over comments he made about the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic in a series of interviews to Woodward in February.
“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said in a Feb. 7 call with Woodward for his book, “Rage,” due out next week. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”
“This is deadly stuff,” the president added.
Trump’s remarks in the book mark a sharp contrast with his remarks on the virus in public earlier this year, in which he downplayed the situation.
The president responded to criticism over the revelations in the book on Wednesday, saying he was trying to avoid starting a panic over the virus.
Biden offered blistering criticism of Trump’s handling of the virus in a speech in Michigan on Friday, in which he said the revelations show that the president failed to do his job on purpose.
The former vice president’s campaign said on Thursday that they might have had fewer campaign events earlier this year if Trump had been more forthcoming about the virus.
“Maybe those are decisions that look a little bit differently in hindsight, but maybe if the president of the United States hadn’t been lying about the extent of the crisis we were facing, we would have had different information to make different decisions,” said Biden campaign spokesman Bill Russo.