‘We’ve done too good of a job,’ Trump says when asked about slowing COVID-19 testing
President Donald Trump on Monday again suggested that the United States was doing too much testing for COVID-19 after White House officials downplayed his earlier remarks that the country should “slow down” testing.
In a video posted to Twitter, Scripps reporter Joe St. George asks Trump whether he requested a slowdown in coronavirus testing. Trump does not directly answer the question.
“If it did slow down, frankly, I think we’re way ahead of ourselves, if you want to know the truth,” Trump replies. “We’ve done too good of a job.”
On Tuesday, Trump wrote on Twitter that the United States would “show fewer cases” if it did less testing.
“Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever expanding. With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!,” Trump wrote.
Also on Tuesday, Trump further explained his comments on testing, Fox News reported.
”If you do more tests, that means you’re going to have more cases,” he said, according to the network. “So, we’ve done so good that we’re showing we have a lot of cases ... And by doing all of those tests, while it’s good to do them in one way, in another way, it makes us look bad. And it’s crazy.”
The flurry of comments followed remarks Trump made Saturday at a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, indicating he had called for a slow down in testing, The New York Post reported.
“I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down please.’ They test and they test,” Trump said, according to the publication.
He called testing “a double-edged sword” and complained that testing reveals more positive cases, calling that “the bad part,” The Hill reported.
A White House official later said Trump was “obviously kidding,” The New York Times reported.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro dismissed the comments as “a light moment” and said the remarks were “tongue in cheek,” Axios reported.
In a conference call with U.S. governors Monday, Vice President Mike Pence defended Trump’s comments as “passing remarks” and praised testing efforts, The Hill reported.
More than 9 million cases of the COVID-19 virus have been confirmed worldwide with more than 469,000 deaths as of Monday, June 22, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States has more than 2.2 million confirmed cases with more than 120,000 deaths.
The U.S. has tested more than 27 million people for the COVID-19 virus, according to the university. But some other nations have performed more tests per capita for their populations.
The World Health Organization has declared coronavirus a global pandemic. In the United States, Trump has declared a national emergency.
This story was originally published June 22, 2020 at 12:22 PM with the headline "‘We’ve done too good of a job,’ Trump says when asked about slowing COVID-19 testing."