President Donald Trump says the rise in coronavirus cases is the result of more testing for the virus across.
During his first campaign rally in months, Trump said, “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. They test, and they test, we got tests, and people don’t know what’s going on,” he added.
Watch the video below:
Trump: 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. pic.twitter.com/RalPJeVH0F
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 21, 2020
His received swift criticism on social media:
BREAKING: Trump just said he told his people to slow down coronavirus testing in America, because it was increasing the number of known infected. This is a coverup. This is criminal.
— Scott Dworkin (@funder) June 21, 2020
Trump admitted to his rally audience tonight that he told his team to slow down COVID-19 testing for the American people because new infections were harming perceptions of his performance. How could any American support such brazen, harmful acts self-interest against the country?
— Evan McMullin 🇺🇸 (@EvanMcMullin) June 21, 2020
Trump literally just said: I told my people to slow down the testing
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) June 21, 2020
Testing is the only way to know how widespread the coronavirus is, which is the only way to plan an effective response. Trump admitted tonight that he deliberately tried to thwart this process. https://t.co/tbU3bQZwP6
— Eric Geller (@ericgeller) June 21, 2020
https://twitter.com/amandacarpenter/status/1274506538657423361
Trump just said he ordered testing slowed down so the number of infected wouldn’t increase.
— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) June 21, 2020
That is…a lot.
Trump saying he told government officials to slow down testing because he thought it would help him politically.
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) June 21, 2020
Trump just told the crowd in Tulsa that he told his Administration to “slow the testing down, please” so the coronavirus infection numbers look lower.
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) June 21, 2020
He is putting our lives at risk to help his re-election chances? How disgusting.
A White House official said Trump made the comment as a joke:
Earlier this week, Trump also said that increased testing leads to an increase coronavirus case count, “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases if any.”
And in May, he said, “We have the best testing in the world … Could be that testing’s, frankly, overrated. Maybe it is overrated.”
“We have more cases than anybody in the world, but why? Because we do more testing,” he continued.
Finally, Trump said, “When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases. They don’t want to write that. It’s common sense. We test much more.”
Experts have said increased testing is important because it allows officials to track and isolate infected individuals