(CNN) As the coronavirus pandemic surges in states that embraced his calls for
aggressive early openings, President Donald Trump is mocking the
very measures that might mitigate a crisis about which he is constantly in
denial.
Trump said at his
weekend rally that he had told his staff to slow down testing for the disease,
which has now killed nearly 120,000 Americans, to hide the discovery of more
cases. Claims by his advisers that he was joking hardly
lessen the questionable motives behind the remark.
Trump has meanwhile
also helped to turn the wearing of masks, which is proven to slow transmission
of the disease, into a culture war issue. And his
rally in Oklahoma on Saturday night was a rebuke of the notion of social
distancing -- even though, ironically, his smaller-than-expected crowd would
have made such practices possible. Health experts warn that spikes in
infections in states like Florida and Arizona -- both of which recorded new
highs in daily infection rates over the weekend -- are being driven by the
public's waning willingness to avoid large gatherings and a reticence to wear
masks.
The President's poor
example represents a typical effort to divide Americans and highlight divisions
over specific issues for his own political gain. But in the long run, apart
from putting thousands of lives at risk, it is counterproductive, since a more
stringent effort to avoid rises in infections as states open up would likely
promote the fast economic recovery on which Trump is banking a reelection campaign
that has slipped into trouble in recent weeks.
New cases of the novel
coronavirus are now rising in 23 states, according to Johns Hopkins University
figures. The disease is steady in 10 states and falling in 17. The data
suggests that the US pandemic is still not under control, five months after the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the first case on American
soil.
By ignoring or trying
to talk away rising infections, the White House is effectively revealing that
it has neither the plans nor the inclination to aggressively fight the worst
public health crisis in a century, with the United States failing to see the
sharp declines in infections after reaching its peak that other major
industrialized nations have seen.
Yet
another week begins with a White House in turmoil
The White House begins
a new week in a typical storm of controversy, exacerbated by Trump's decision
to hold a rally that could turn into a super-spreader event during a pandemic
and his administration's move to fire Geoffrey Berman, a top prosecutor in
New York, that sparked new concerns about its
respect for the rule of law and the independence of the justice system.
Trump woke up on Monday and launched into a frantic, capitalized Twitter tirade claiming, against all available evidence, that mail-in voting causes widespread fraud and foreign election meddling.
Trump woke up on Monday and launched into a frantic, capitalized Twitter tirade claiming, against all available evidence, that mail-in voting causes widespread fraud and foreign election meddling.
A Trump adviser told
CNN that Trump is "very" upset about the turnout at the rally
Saturday night. Donors and friends of the President have been fuming Sunday in
the wake of Trump's poorly-attended rally this weekend, a person involved with
the re-election said.
Meanwhile, the virus is
still raging, and the administration doesn't seem to be on the same page on
whether there will be a second wave in the fall. Despite White House trade
adviser Peter Navarro telling CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union"
that the White House is preparing for one,
Vice President Mike Pence has blamed the media for inciting "panic" on that front.
The administration's
sluggish efforts to ramp up coronavirus testing early in the pandemic worsened
the disease's impact. And though the number of tests conducted has now reached
25 million, the figure is far below the millions of tests a week that health
experts say are needed to identify the true spread of the disease and to trace
and isolate those infected.
CNN holds elected officials and
candidates accountable by pointing out what's true and what's not. Here's a look at our recent fact
checks.
The controversy over
Trump's testing comments completed a miserable weekend that was supposed to
give the President momentum but instead laid bare his political weaknesses,
including his constant habit of saying wild things that detract from his own
campaign. The President is angry, CNN reported, about the poor crowd -- around 6,200 people -- who showed up
to his rally in Tulsa after he had spent the week claiming the attendance would
be record-breaking.
During his rally on
Saturday night, Trump made the shocking claim that he had told his staff to
slow testing to cover up the true extent of the disease. And it's not the first
time he's suggested that.
"You know testing
is a double-edged sword," Trump said Saturday. "Here's the bad part
... 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."
It is not clear whether
officials did slow testing at a time when they were claiming that they were
speeding it up and falsely proclaiming that the United States was a world
leader in testing. An administration official told CNN that Trump was
"obviously kidding." Navarro also said the President was joking on
"State of the Union" on Sunday.
"Come on now, that
was tongue in cheek," Navarro told Tapper. "That was a light moment
for him at a rally."
Why the President would
be joking about the testing effort in a pandemic that has killed thousands of
Americans and revealed his own administration's liabilities is a mystery. But
if he was speaking in jest, the remark in itself would reflect the flippant
manner in which he has approached the pandemic and his own rejection of the
scientific steps that could improve the situation.
Acting Homeland
Security Secretary Chad Wolf argued that Trump was mad at the press for its
(factually correct) coverage of rising cases of new coronavirus infections.
"What you heard
from the President was frustration -- frustration in the sense of that we are
testing, I believe we've tested over 25 million Americans. We've tested more
than any other country in this world," Wolf said on CBS's "Face the Nation"
on Sunday. "Instead, the press and others, all they want to focus on is an
increasing case count."
Trump's remarks drew an
immediate rebuke from the campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
"This is an
appalling attempt to lessen the numbers only to make them look good,"
Symone Sanders, a top Biden adviser, said on "Fox News Sunday."
"That's what will
be remembered long after last night's debacle of a rally -- the admission of
the President that he slowed testing for his political benefit."
Americas Rising Infection
Rates:
Public health experts
reacted with disbelief to Trump's comments about testing.
"This is
incredibly frustrating for the millions of Americans who have gotten sick and
have not been able to get tests. It's got to be incredibly frustrating for
people who've lost families in nursing homes, because we haven't been able to
test nursing home residents and workers, or meatpacking plant workers. This is
unfortunately not a joke," Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global
Health Institute, told CNN on Sunday.
On NBC's "Meet the
Press," Michael Osterholm, director for the Center for Infectious Disease
Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said that the pandemic was
like a "forest fire" that might not slow down and was being
exacerbated by the White House's lack of a strategy.
"At this point, we
don't really have a national plan that really puts together what we're trying
to do. We have 50 different states, the District of Columbia, the territories,
all kind of with their own plan," Osterholm said. "We're at 70% of
the number of cases today that we were at the very height of the pandemic cases
in early April, and yet I don't see any kind of a 'This is where we need to go,
this is what we need to do to get there' kind of effort, and that's one of our
challenges."
New criticism of the
administration's poor response to the pandemic coincided with alarming new
evidence that the disease is making strides in southern and western states.
Arizona health officials reported 2,592 new infections on Sunday. The state's
total of cases has nearly doubled in 14 days. Tulsa County, which hosted
Trump's rally, reported yet another new daily high of coronavirus cases with
143 in the previous 24 hours. Florida reported 3,000 more Covid-19 cases on
Sunday after reaching a new daily high of over 4,000 new infections the day
before.
Officials in Florida,
South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and other states are reporting that a higher
proportion of younger people are testing positive for the virus. While younger
people typically experience less severe symptoms of Covid-19 than their elders,
they can spread it to others and the data is alarming because it suggests that
social distancing and masking are breaking down.
Yet the President has
refused to wear a mask in public and been ambivalent at the very least about
their use, and his conservative supporters have portrayed the use of masks as
an attempt by liberals and elitists to infringe on the basic freedoms of
Americans. Were the President to model mask wearing -- or argue that it could
be a temporary inconvenience that could help everyone resume normal life sooner
-- he could have huge influence, given the prominence of his platform and his
influence over his supporters.
"The best
spokesman would be the President," Phoenix mayor Kate Gallego, a Democrat,
told CNN's Wolf Blitzer ahead of Trump's event in the city on Tuesday.
"If he told
everyone at that rally it was important to wear masks, I believe they would do
it," Gallego said. "Please send the strongest signal to everyone --
they need to wash their hands, they need to wear masks and they have to stay
home if there's any question if they are sick."
Although the Trump
campaign handed out masks at the rally on Saturday, few people in the crowd
seemed to be wearing them. Senior officials who traveled with the President
mostly and ostentatiously declined to wear one. This was despite the fact
that six campaign staffers sent to prepare
the rally tested positive for the virus before the President arrived.
CNN's
Jim Acosta and Sarah Westwood contributed to this report.
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