Trump Continues Rant On Testing Which He Says Has ‘Created’ Cases In COVID-19 Hotspots

President Donald Trump looks on during a joint press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda in the Rose Garden of the White House on June 24, 2020. (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
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President Trump said on Thursday night that the country’s “test everybody” approach has “created” cases of the coronavirus in states like Florida and Texas which have seen surges of new infections in recent weeks.

“Test everybody, pull-up parking lots, everything else, what we’ve done is we’ve created a tremendous number of cases.” Trump told Fox News commentator Sean Hannity in a phone interview.

The remarks came as Hannity asked the President what he makes of the spikes in coronavirus cases in the country’s hotspots.

The President has habitually both touted the quality of American testing for COVID-19 and blamed the practice of testing as a way to avoid addressing any personal failures or mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis in the United States which ranks highest worldwide in the number of reported infections.

On Thursday, he clung to that pattern, saying testing for the virus around the country is “massive” and “the best,” while hammering on a point that has been repeatedly challenged by health experts — that widespread testing is to blame for the increase in cases. 

The President insisted that “most of the cases immediately get better,” and that recent cases in particular are mostly among young people who “have sniffles and two days later they are fine and they are not sick to start off with.” 

Texas reported for the third day in a row on Thursday roughly 10,000 new coronavirus infections. Governor Greg Abbott (R) bracing for the surge to continue warned in a local Fox news-affiliate interview on Thursday that the numbers will “look a lot worse” going into next week. Meanwhile in Florida, some hospitals have begun to exhaust their capacity to admit new patients as infections swell in the state.

Trump also attacked infectious diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday for recent surges of COVID-10 infections when asked what he made of Fauci’s calls to quickly get a handle on the crisis to avoid further loss of life.

“First of all, the mortality rate, and Dr. Fauci is a nice man but he’s made a lot of mistakes,” Trump said.

After criticizing Fauci and other health experts Trump said that many of his own efforts including bans on travel from “very infected China” and elsewhere “saved hundreds of thousands of lives.”

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