Trump continues to use his press briefings to spread more lies about his
failed response to the coronavirus, particularly about his
administration’s failure to ramp up testing early on, which allowed the
virus to spread rapidly and undetected.
Trump once again shifted blame to states and
hospitals for a shortage of coronavirus tests that his administration
developed and distributes, saying: "Hospitals can do their own testing, also. States can do their own
testing. … We’re the federal government, we’re not supposed to stand on
street corners doing testing.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper said, "One month ago today, President Trump visited CDC and said, falsely,
‘anybody who wants a test gets a test.’ Wasn’t true then and isn’t true
now. Today he kicked it to states and hospitals, saying the federal
government is ‘not supposed to stand on street corners doing testing.' " According to the New York Times, “Testing availability remains a signature failure of the battle against
the coronavirus in the United States, despite President Trump’s boast
last week that he got a rapid test and results within minutes.”
Trump took his lies about the U.S.’s testing
capabilities one step further by claiming the U.S. had done more tests
“proportionally” than any other country — another claim that’s demonstrably false.
According to the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake: “Fact check: The U.S. has tested a lower proportion of its population than others.”
Trump continues in his attempts to claim that the U.S. has more
confirmed cases of coronavirus because we’ve done more testing, but it
was Trump’s failure to test early that allowed cases to explode in our
country. The Washington Post reported,
“The most consequential failure involved a breakdown in efforts to
develop a diagnostic test that could be mass produced and distributed
across the United States, enabling agencies to map early outbreaks of
the disease, and impose quarantine measures to contain them.”
Trump again denied the critical supplies shortage
facing states and hospitals, and dismissed an inspector general report
confirming he’s responsible as merely political, despite the fact the IG
was elevated to her position by Trump’s own administration. According to the Los Angeles Times, the 34-page report released Monday was based on hundreds of interviews
of administrators at 323 medical centers coast to coast from March 23
to 27. It largely validated reports from news organizations, and painted
a far more dire picture than the one President Trump describes at his
daily news conferences.” When Fox News reporter Kristin Fisher attempted to ask
Trump specifically about the report’s finding that hospitals are working
with a “severe shortage” of testing materials, Trump unloaded on her. “You should say ‘congratulations, great job,’ instead of being so horrid in the way you ask a question,” he said.
As Trump denies and deflects, people keep dying. And now we are finding out the African Americans are more proportionally susceptible to the virus-- something which no one at the federal level is focusing on. In Chicago, blacks make up about 30% of population-- yet their share of coronavirus deaths is at 68%. As of Monday, 33 of the 45 Milwaukee County residents who died of COVID-19 were black. That's 73%, though black residents make up only 28% of the county population. In the state of Louisiana, roughly 70% of the people who have died from the virus are black-- a striking disparity for a state where African-Americans make up only 32% of the population. Over 40% of Michigan deaths from COVID-19 are African-American, a racial demographic that makes up only 14% of the state's pupulation.
When asked about these disparities, Trump only had this to say: "I don't like it. We are going to have statistics over the next two to three days."
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