Trump Follows Through on Threat to 'Slow the Testing Down'
During his Tulsa rally last weekend, President Trump said the quiet part out loud, confessing that he sees coronavirus testing as a political threat and wants to diminish America’s caseload by doing a worse job of measuring it. “Testing is a double edged sword,” Trump told the sparse Oklahoma crowd. “Here’s the bad part. When you do testing…. you will find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’”
After a gaslighty news cycle in which top deputies insisted that Trump was being facetious, Trump clarified, “I don’t kid,” and even expanded his thinking on Twitter: “Cases up only because of our big number testing.”
Science is not Trump’s strong suit. After a precipitous drop, the percentage of positive cases is now rising again — pointing to an increase in disease, not simply a greater availability of diagnostics. And as states like Texas that were largely spared in the initial months of the outbreak have emerged as hot spots, the United States just experienced a record for new cases, with 38,672 in a single day, surpassing a mark from late April.
Link to tweet
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Link to tweet
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Despite — or perhaps because of — these shameful numbers, the administration is following through on Trump’s orders to slow down testing. The Department of Health and Human Services has announced it will pull funding from more than a dozen drive-through testing sites across five states, including Texas, at the end of the month.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-acts-to-slow-testing-down-1020163/
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