'As The President Fidgets, People Are Dying,' Pelosi Slams Trump

President Donald Trump was criticized by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Sunday for his poor response to the coronavirus pandemic due to which a lot of people have been dying.

Speaking at CNN’s 'State of the Union,' Pelosi said that “as the president fiddles, people are dying." She was responding to whether Trump should relax some of the social distancing guidelines put forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in parts of the country where a major outbreak of COVID-19 has not yet been suffered.

"This is such a very, very sad time for us. So, we should be taking every precaution. What the president — his denial at the beginning was deadly. His delaying of getting equipment to where — it continues — his delay in getting equipment to where it's needed is deadly,” Pelosi said in the show.

“And now I think the best thing would be to do is to prevent more loss of life, rather than open things up, so that — because we just don't know,” criticizing the President’s idea of having the country open up by Easter.

Trump had said last week that he intended much of the country to return to normal by Easter Sunday. However, as the number of confirmed cases continued to skyrocket in the country, the President was forced to backtrack from his widely criticized comments and extend the social distancing guidelines to April 30 from April 15 on Sunday.

She continued her criticism by asking if Trump was made aware of the possibility of such an outbreak, NBC News reported.

"I'm saying that, because ... the other day, when he was signing the bill, he said, “just think, 20 days ago, everything was great.” No, everything wasn't great. We had nearly 500 cases and 17 deaths already. And in that 20 days, because we weren't prepared, we now have 2,000 deaths and 100,000 cases,” Pelosi said in the show. "...as the president fiddles, people are dying. And we have to — we just have to take every precaution."

Pelosi then emphasized the importance of working in a unified way to counter the threat posed by the novel coronavirus and also stressed on testing more people in other regions to evaluate its nature.

As of Sunday night, the U.S. led the world in the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases with 140,960 positive cases and 2,457 deaths.