At a June 20, 2020 rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Trump said he asked officials to slow their testing for COVID-19.
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 had tests and people don’t know what’s going on. We got tests, we got another one over here. The young man’s 10-years-old. He’s got the sniffles. He’ll recover in about 15 minutes. That’s a case, add him to it. That’s okay. That’s a case.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany responded to questions saying, “any suggestion that testing has been curtailed is not rooted in fact.” and that Trump’s remark “was a comment that he made in jest.”
In a subsequent interview, when asked if the remark was true, Trump failed to answer the question.
TRUMP: If we did slow it down, we wouldn’t show nearly as many cases. You’re showing people that are asymptomatic, you’re showing people that have very little problem, you’re showing young people that don’t have a problem. But we’re doing so much testing, 25 million tests.
ST. GEORGE: But did you ask to slow it down?
TRUMP: Uhh, if it did slow down, frankly, I think we’re way ahead of ourselves, if you want to know the truth. We’ve done too good a job, because every time we go up – with 25 million tests, you’re going to find more people. So then they say, ‘oh we have more cases in the United States.’ The reason we have more cases is because we do more testing than any other country by far.
Though administration officials said Trump was likely joking, when asked if this was the case four days after his original remark, Trump replied, “I don’t kid. Let me just tell you. Let me make it clear.”
On the day of the Tulsa rally when Trump made the original remark, the United States had suffered 192,180 deaths, over twice all the Americans lost in wars from Vietnam to the modern day combined.
Trump previously called testing “overrated,” said that if testing were halted “we’d have very few cases, if any,” and spent the early months of the pandemic dismissing concerns about the growing crisis.
The Washington Post – Democrats, public health experts decry Trump for saying he asked officials to slow down coronavirus testing
The Hill – UPDATE: Trump denies he slowed down coronavirus testing
ABC News – White House claims Trump just joking when he said he ordered COVID testing slowdown
Axios – Trump declines to say he was joking about slowing down coronavirus testing
Politico – ‘I don’t kid’: Trump says he wasn’t joking about slowing coronavirus testing
Worldometer – Coronavirus, United States
