Was Trump Kidding?
- fionacsweet
- Jun 23, 2020
- 2 min read
President Donald Trump now says that he was not in fact joking when he told his supporters at the rally in Tulsa that he asked staff to slow down the number of virus tests being performed. This goes against the word of many senior members of his own administration that said his comment was made in jest. Trump said this: "I don't kid, let me just tell you, let me make it clear." Well, thank you for clearing it up because your staff members were really dropping the ball. He also said that "by having more tests, we have more cases." I am personally not sure what logic this is, but this makes even less sense than the last season of the Bachelor.
Trump basically told the reporter that though he never officially gave an order to slow down testing, he did tell his staff that the US would look better if we slowed it down. This goes against the opinions of researchers at Harvard University, who have said that the US will need to administer at least 5 million tests per day by early June to begin reopening. We currently administer about 500,000 a day. Trump even gave us an example as to how we would look better with lesser testing: "So, instead of 25 million tests, let's say we did 10 million tests. We'd look like we were doing much better because we'd have far fewer cases." Even though Trump asserts later that the US is doing much more than every other country, looking at the number of tests performed per million population actually puts the USA at #10 in terms of testing (see cover photo).
So long story short, Trump wasn't kidding when he made that remark but he thankfully has not ordered any of his people to actually fulfill his idea. He has another rally today put on for Students for Trump in Arizona. I attempted to reserve tickets but unfortunately the site was crashed by the time I attempted to do it. Tiktokers saved the day once again!
In all realness though, I am rather concerned about Trump's mental capacity. Many hardcore Trump supporters I know were even turned off by this admission. The fact that he has put his pride once again in front of the health and well-being of his citizens concerns me. In a time of crisis like this, how a country looks to other world powers is not of utmost importance. If we had increased numbers due to testing, I don't believe any other leader would laugh at us as everyone is figuring out how to deal with this. I don't know. What I do know is that increased testing is the only way for us to mitigate this virus before we have a vaccine.
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