Report: Trump Dropped the Ball on Coronavirus Testing Because He Only Wanted Good News
Trump has demonstrated on several occasions that he views the coronavirus pandemic not through the lens of keeping Americans safe, but of how it will impact his re-election chances. He all but said as much last week, telling reporters that he’d rather keep passengers on a Grand Princess cruise ship who tested positive out of America because “he likes the numbers being where they are.”
The same day, Dan Diamond of Politico reported on how Trump has “undermined his administration’s own efforts to fight the coronavirus outbreak” by “resisting attempts to plan for worst-case scenarios, overturning a public-health plan upon request from political allies and repeating only the warnings that he chose to hear.”
Considering what we know about the president, none of this is surprising, nor was it surprising when Diamond told NPR’s Terry Gross on Thursday that Trump hasn’t been pushing for aggressive testing because he’s “made clear the lower the numbers on coronavirus … the better for his potential reelection this fall.”
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Trump’s inaction likely slowed testing for the coronavirus, a critical safety areas where the U.S. has lagged well behind that of other nations. As of Thursday, the U.S. was administering only 23 tests per million people, the lowest rate of any developed nation contending with COVID-19.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-coronavirus-testing-reelection-966872/
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