Rachel Maddow cut through Trump’s happy talk and obliterated the administration’s lies on coronavirus testing and availability in the US.
Maddow said:
This is data from the American Clinical Laboratory Association, which does the vast majority of all coronavirus testing, in the United States, they do two-thirds of the testing. Look, since the first week of April, their test numbers are actually down. Right? You heard all of this happy talk about how we’re going to reopen the country, and what we need to have in place to reopen things. If we are seriously going to even approach talk about responsibly opening anything back up, our test numbers ought to be skyrocketing right now. They have been terrible in the past. They ought to be going through the roof right now if we’re even going to approach the question of opening anything back up. Right? You know that testing has been bad from day one. But the federal government’s response on this specific salient, seminal thing, it’s getting worse over time, not better. A lack of a national testing strategy has been a day one debacle in this crisis.
I think it’s important to realize that despite whatever happy talk you have been hearing about it, and despite all of the discussion about how important it is, when you look at what they’re actually doing, the number of tests performed in America is dropping. Don’t pay attention to what they’re saying. Look at what they are doing. America’s performance in terms of getting coronavirus testing made available to the American people is bad and getting worse by the day.
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Video:
.@maddow delivers the truth about coronavirus testing and Trump, "Don't pay attention to what they're saying. Look at what they are doing. America's performance in terms of getting coronavirus testing made available to the American people is bad and getting worse by the day." pic.twitter.com/6rOib2b9F0
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) April 16, 2020
The Republican happy talk about relaxing restrictions and reopening the economy is an attempt to ignore a public health crisis and squeak through an election in November.
If the economy is reopened, the coronavirus will surge into a second wave and the nation will need to go into a bigger and longer lockdown. Testing is going down when it should be going up, and this appears to be by Republican design.
The situation is getting worse, not better. Don’t believe anything that comes from Trump or his party. Republicans can deny testing, but the can’t hide illness and death caused by this virus.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
