Donald Trump has set his sights on New Zealand once again, incorrectly claiming there was a "massive" increase in cases on Thursday.
At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Friday (NZ time) the US president spoke out against New Zealand
"Any time there's a good country they want to compare, because we've done an incredible job," he told the crowd.
"You look at our mortality rates, you look at all the things but they like to compare us to others so they were talking about New Zealand."
The US has had more than 172,400 deaths from COVID-19. New Zealand has had 22.
"New Zealand, New Zealand it's over for New Zealand! Everything's gone it's all over - they're beautiful," said Trump, presumably imitating those who have complimented New Zealand's COVID-19 response.
"They had a massive breakout yesterday," he said.
He then went on to talk about South Korea’s "big breakout".
On Thursday New Zealand recorded five new active cases of COVID-19. The US recorded 46,500 according to data from the Centre for Disease Control.
It's the third time in a week Trump has exaggerated the scale of New Zealand's outbreak.
On Tuesday, he bizarrely said New Zealand had beaten COVID-19 to "show me something".
"Even New Zealand, you see what is going on in New Zealand. They beat it, they beat it. It was like front page, they beat it because they wanted to show me something. The problem is [a] big surge in New Zealand. It's terrible. We don't want that."
The trend continued on to Thursday when he said New Zealand was in the grip of a "big outbreak".
"New Zealand, by the way, had a big outbreak and other countries that were held up to try and make us look not as good as we should look, because we've done an incredible job, but they're having a lot of outbreaks but they'll be able to put 'em out and we'll put 'em out," he told reporters.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has spoken out against Trump's claims calling them "patently wrong".
"I think anyone who's following COVID and its transmission globally will quite easily see that New Zealand's nine cases in a day does not compare to the United States' tens of thousands, and in fact does not compare to most countries in the world."
