According to USA Today, President Donald Trump announced Saturday that he is sending over one thousand medical military troops to New York City, which has become the epicenter of America’s COVID-19 crisis.
Trump did not specify from which branches they would be drawn from, but he did state that they would be arriving on Sunday and Monday be deployed “where they’re needed most.”
Military steps in
He explained that additional details about their mission would be provided in the following day’s briefing by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.
“We will move heaven and earth to safeguard our great American citizens,” the president said during his daily coronavirus press briefing, according to U.S. News & World Report. “We will continue to use every power to keep our people healthy and secure.”
Those troops will join the USNS Comfort, a Navy medical ship that arrived in the Big Apple on March 28. “This great ship behind me is a 70,000-ton message of hope and solidarity to the incredible people of New York,” Trump said as the Comfort set sail from Virginia days earlier.
He later tweeted: “With the courage of our doctors and nurses, with the skill of our scientists and innovators, with the determination of the American People, and with the grace of God, WE WILL WIN THIS WAR. When we achieve this victory, we will emerge stronger and more united than ever before!”
The ship was previously dispatched in 2019 to aid hurricane victims in the Bahamas and assisted Venezuelan refugees in Peru the year before.
Hope for the future
At his Saturday press conference, Trump acknowledged that the coming weeks will be dark, stating, “There will be a lot of death, unfortunately.” However, he did sound a hopeful note for the future.
“We’re going to be back to good health soon in my opinion,” the president predicted, going on to add that “we’re making good progress.”
The president also noted that he had spoken with officials from the professional sports leagues about games possibly starting up again in the fall.
“We have to open our country again,” Trump insisted. “We don’t want to be doing this for months. This country wasn’t meant for this. We have to open the country again.”
As of Sunday morning, the United States had over 300,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and 8,503 deaths, with more than a quarter of those fatalities in New York City alone, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker.
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