CBS’ Dickerson Grills Mark Meadows: Why Is Trump’s Covid Messaging Different from What Public Health Officials Are Saying?

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows defended President Donald Trump’s coronavirus messaging being at odds with the messaging being sent out by members of his own coronavirus task force.

For example, Fauci explained during his testimony this past week about why the U.S. is still seeing a surge in cases. The president called his own public health expert “WRONG” and once again continued insisting, “We have more cases because we have tested far more than any other country, 60,000,000. If we tested less, there would be less cases.”

Additionally, after the past week of the president promoting hydroxychloroquine on Twitter, the administration’s own testing czar just said today he can’t recommend people take it.

CBS’ John Dickerson pressed Meadows on this issue and why the president is using his megaphone to share a very different message than the experts.

Meadows quibbled with the idea that it’s a different message and said the president is taking this seriously, before trying to defend POTUS pushing back on what Fauci has said.

Dickerson jumped in and said, “Testing is important. Testing has to take place. The president being in a debate with Dr. Fauci doesn’t get people focused on what you listen to all of his public health experts saying on all the other channels. The president’s got his channel. On the other channels you have health officials telling people wear masks.”

“John, I’m here with you this morning talking to your viewers, to talk about the facts,” Meadows responded. “And the facts are this, as we continue to test, we’re continue to look at areas that we need to be concerned about. Nursing homes, long term care, those that have three comorbidities. We need to make sure that we focus there. We’re finding more and more asymptomatic people. But the real result is we’re not going to test our way out of this. We’ve got to get a therapeutic we’ve got to make sure that we have a treatment and we’re making great progress.”

Dickerson again brought up the president’s own megaphone and how “the things he’s concerned about don’t seem to be the same things his public health officials are concerned about.”

Meadows claimed that Trump checks in with the doctors daily and said the U.S. is already making progress.

You can watch above, via CBS.