Trump says coronavirus crisis ‘worse than Pearl Harbor’ or 9/11

US President Donald Trump speaks about COVID-19, known as coronavirus, alongside nurses after signing a Proclamation in honor of National Nurses Day in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, May 6, 2020. Saul Loeb / AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that fallout from the novel coronavirus pandemic has hit the United States harder than Pearl Harbor in World War II or the 9/11 attacks.

“This is worse than Pearl Harbor. This is worse than the World Trade Center. And it should have never happened,” he told reporters at the White House.

The surprise Japanese attack in 1941 on the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii drew the United States into World War II.

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks killed about 3,000 people, mostly in the World Trade Center in New York, triggering two decades of US wars and anti-terrorism operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries.