Team Trump Says It Was a COVID Testing ‘Joke.’
His Own Health Officials Aren’t Laughing.
FUNNY, NOT FUNNY
The president said he wanted to slow down coronavirus testing. White House aides say it was for laughs. Others find it not funny at all.
Erin Banco
National Security Reporter
Published Jun. 22, 2020 3:24AM ET
Drew Angerer/Getty
White House officials and President Donald Trump loyalists tried on Sunday to walk back remarks he made over the weekend in which he told rally-goers that he had asked officials to slow COVID-19 testing so as to decrease the number of confirmed cases in the U.S.
“He was obviously kidding,” one White House official told The Daily Beast. Peter Navarro, senior adviser to Trump, told Fox News on Sunday that the president’s words were “tongue-in-cheek” and not meant to be taken seriously.
But two officials working on the coronavirus response within the Trump administration, as well as state officials and experts in emergency response, told The Daily Beast that they did not take the president’s remarks lightly. Whether facetious or not, they argued, the casual indifference Trump displayed towards testing at his Tulsa rally only reaffirmed that his administration was not prepared when the pandemic response hit—and may still not be.
“I always feared this was what was happening,” said one state health official who coordinates with the federal government on testing. “But his speech last night really made it seem like maybe this is the reason why they were slow to get us the resources we needed to do the testing.”
And two administration officials, both of whom have worked alongside the president’s task force, said Trump’s speech Saturday reignited longstanding fears among some working on his coronavirus response that the administration may have attempted to find ways to deflate the U.S. case count.
www.thedailybeast.com
Lisa Daftari – The Foreign Desk<info@foreigndesk.news
