The world is at war with the invisible army of the new coronavirus, US President Donald Trump said here, and asserted that we will win.
The president repeated the expression multiple times on Tuesday, telling the nation that he was using all available resources to combat the challenge posed by the virus that has so far killed at least 100 people in the US and over 7,000 globally.
"The world is at war with a hidden enemy. WE WILL WIN!" Trump tweeted in the afternoon.
"We have to get rid of this, we have to win this war and ideally quickly," he told reporters at a White House news conference.
Trump referred to the fight against the COVID-19 as a "war" again at a meeting with CEOs of the tourism industry.
"We have to help the airline industry. It wasn't their fault. So we are adding it up. It will be fine. It will come back very quickly once we are finished with our war with the virus," he said.
"We know your industry is among the hardest hit by the economic impact of the virus. Our goal is to beat the virus and we will. We call it the hidden virus, the hidden enemy, with aggressive action now so that we can rebound stronger than ever before and that is what we are doing and everyone is cooperating," the President said.
Earlier in the day, he told reporters at the White House: "We have to fight that invisible enemy, I guess unknown, but we are getting to know it a lot better."
Trump asserted that his administration would knock this enemy out. "We have to knock out this enemy. This is a really tough enemy. We have to knock out this, and we will have an economy--I actually think will have an economy like we've never had before. It's all pent-up," he said in response to a question.
The city of New York has already described it as a warlike situation. "We're getting into a situation where the only analogy is war," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said last week.
Trump is not the only world leader to declare this a warlike situation. French President Emanual Macron, in an address to the nation, said, "We are at war against coronavirus, an invisible enemy."
"We are at war. With an enemy who is invisible, but not invincible," Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a state address this week.
Popular American television journalist Joe Scarborough from MSNBC said the coronavirus pandemic is more like World War II than the 9/11 terror attacks. The Wall Street Journal said a generational war is brewing against the coronavirus.
At the US Capitol, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called for at least USD750 billion in federal funds to wage war against the coronavirus.
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