Mike Huckabee goes on bizarre rant about Trump 'sucking' coronavirus out of Americans' lungs

In Donald Trump’s America, very few national figures are as loyal to the president as Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and father of the former White House press secretary.

And, as criticism has mounted regarding Mr Trump’s reaction to the deadly coronavirus, Mr Huckabee got a chance to display that obedience once again — and took the bait, hook line and sinker, by delivering a bizarre defence of the man.

Mr Trump “could personally suck the virus out of the 60,000 people in the world, suck it out of their lungs,” Mr Huckabee said on Fox News during a segment on the fears surrounding the virus that has actually infected more than 80,000 people, “swim to the bottom of the ocean and spit it out, and he would be accused of pollution for messing up the ocean.”

The comment came shortly after Mr Trump announced that the risk of infection to Americans remains “very low”, and promised that the US is “ready” for whatever comes up next. During that briefing, in the White House, Mr Trump announced that vice president Mike Pence would be leading the country’s response to the outbreak.

But the president’s response has been criticised loudly and frequently by a group that includes both Democrats and Republicans, with a special adviser to the director general of the World Health Organisation saying that the president’s announcement was mostly “incoherent”, and members of Congress saying that the White House isn’t asking for enough money to combat the growing threat.

Of the choice of Mr Pence to be leading the charge, powerful politicians like congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have claimed the former Indiana governor doesn’t believe in science, so is unprepared for the project. Others have pointed to Mr Pence’s bungling of an HIV virus outbreak in Indiana in 2015, when he was opposed to measures like a needle exchange that may have helped stop the spread of the virus.

“I found most of what he said incoherent,” said Dr Ezekiel Emanuel, the WHO adviser and a former health policy adviser in the Obama administration, said during an interview on MSNBC of Mr Trump’s Wednesday press briefing on coronavirus.

Mr Trump had originally requested $2.5 billion to combat the threat, leading many in Congress to say that the figure is just not enough, and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer suggesting that $8.5 billion is likely a better figure.

There have been 15 total confirmed cases of coronavirus in the US, with 12 of those coming as a result of travel and three from person-to-person spread, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Another 46 people have been repatriated to the United States with the disease, with 43 of those coming from the “Diamond Princess” cruise ship and three from Wuhan, where the virus first began.

On Tuesday, just a day before Mr Trump’s announcement, the director of the CDC’s National Centre for Immunisation and Respiratory Diseases said that it was only a matter of time before the outbreak became more severe in the US.

“We expect we will see community spread in this country,” the director, Dr Nancy Messonnier, said. “It’s not so much a question of if it will happen anymore, but rather a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness.”