Shutterstock
During his rally in Tulsa on Saturday, President Donald Trump stated that COVID-19 testing is a “double-edged sword”. He told supporters in the arena that “When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people. You’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please’”.
White House aides, attempting to guide the conversation away from the abjectly terrifying sentiment of ignoring a pandemic to save face, claimed that the president was “clearly joking”. However, on Tuesday, Trump himself torpedoed this theory, telling reporters “I don’t kid”.
He continued, telling reporters “We have got the greatest testing program anywhere in the world. We test better than anybody in the world. Our tests are the best in the world, and we have the most of them. By having more tests, we find more cases”.
Mr. Trump’s political opponents quickly seized on the moment to further paint Trump as not taking the pandemic seriously enough. Over 120,000 Americans have already died due to the disease, and case numbers remain stubbornly high in the US. Senior White House aides have tried to square Trump’s dubious logic about slowing down testing in the days since the Tulsa rally.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, speaking to reporters on Monday, maintained that Trump was joking during the rally. “It was a comment that he made in jest. Any suggestion that testing has been curtailed is not rooted in fact”.
CBS News reported that Vice President Mike Pence made similar statements in a Monday conference call with US governors. Mr. Pence called the president’s take on testing a “passing observation,” not actual US policy on tests. Government conference calls, even over the best VPN, can still be subject to reporting from news outlets.
National polling has shown the president’s approval ratings in an all-time low spot. When polled about his handling of the pandemic, the majority of respondents in a number of national polls have rated the president’s job as unfavorable. The president, meanwhile, continues to signal that he is not taking the pandemic seriously.
When reserving seats for Saturday’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, supporters of the president had to sign waivers indicating they understood the health risks of a large gathering during a pandemic. Mr. Trump has another rally scheduled for Tuesday in Phoenix, Arizona. Troublingly, Arizona showed its highest one-day reporting of new COVID-19 cases yesterday.
Whether Mr. Trump’s continued denial of the severity of the pandemic will cost him in November is still up in the air. For the time being, however, Mr. Trump is doubling down on his assertion that testing is a “double-edged sword”.
