Amanda Kloots slams Trump’s comments about not letting Covid ‘dominate’ life after losing husband to virus

Amanda Kloots has spoken out against Donald Trump’s claims that people should not let Covid-19 “dominate” their lives, after losing her husband Nick Cordero to the virus in July.

Kloots shared her response to the president’s comments after he announced his return to the White House and tweeted in part: “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.”

Cordero, Kloots’s husband of almost three years, died aged 41 after spending more than three months in a hospital, receiving treatment for Covid-19.

“'Let it dominate your life’? No one’s letting it. Nick didn’t let it. It wasn’t a choice, and it dominated his life, it dominated my life, it dominated our family’s life for 95 days and because he didn’t make it it will forever affect my life,” Kloots said in an Instagram Story video.

She then urged Trump: “Have some empathy! Why are you bragging? Have some empathy to Americans. You are our leader. Have some empathy to the people who are suffering and grieving.

“It’s just not fair to act like this disease is nothing and you got right over it. I’m so happy that you did. Thank God you did. But guess what? There are a lot of people that didn’t.”

Kloots suggested that Trump’s experience with the disease should in fact give him a better understanding of how the virus has affected “our country and its people”, and inspire him to “side with your people”.

She also shared a screenshot of Trump’s tweet on her Instagram account, writing in the caption: "To all the over 208,000 Americans who lost loved ones to this virus – I stand by you, with you, holding your hand.

“Unfortunately it did dominate our lives didn’t it? It dominated Nick’s family’s lives and my family’s lives. I guess we ‘let it’ – like it was our choice??”

Kloots added that she “cried next to my husband for 95 days watching what COVID did to the person I love”.

“It IS something to be afraid of,” she added. “After you see the person you love the most die from this disease you would never say what this tweet says. There is no empathy to all the lives lost. He is bragging instead. It is sad. It is hurtful. It is disgraceful.”

Trump’s coronavirus treatment has been far from typical. Doctors rushed him onto experimental antiviral drugs and prescribed an aggressive course of steroids that would be unavailable to the average patient.

On Tuesday, the president was to receive his final dose of the antiviral drug remdesivir. It was not known whether he was still being administered the powerful steroid dexamethasone, which was prescribed Saturday after he suffered a second drop in his blood oxygen levels in as many days.

Additional reporting by agencies