Jake Tapper Rips Trump for ‘Slow Down the Testing’ Rally Remarks: We Need Leadership, Not ‘Glib Indifference’

CNN’s Jake Tapper ended Sunday’s State of the Union slamming President Donald Trump for his “glib” comments about coronavirus testing during his Saturday night rally.

Tapper reviewed how the president had already “ignored the pleas” of health officials in Tulsa by holding the rally in the first place, “in a town where coronavirus cases are only increasing and done, frankly, the least safe way possible, indoors with no social distancing and no masks required.”

Then he showed the clip of the president saying, “When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please!'”

The White House has already said that was just the president joking, but Tapper noted the U.S. death toll thus far and said, “This is not a particularly amusing subject.”

Tapper also pointed to similar comments the president has made over the course of the pandemic:

“You might remember when he mused that he did not want Americans trapped on a cruise ship to come into the United States to disembark because then the numbers of those in the U.S. would increase and that would look bad. Once again, the president is revealing that he seems to see this primarily as a public relations crisis, not as a deadly pandemic.”

“Instead of leading an aggressive nationwide effort to test millions of Americans every day and undergo contact tracing and isolation of the virus to stop the spread, and truly allow the economy to restart,” Tapper concluded, “President Trump seems to just be hoping it goes away, while he mocks those who adhere to CDC guidelines and wear masks. The United States needs leadership to address this continuing pandemic. The United States does not need glib indifference and a myopic focus on bad headlines, instead of how to prevent more sick and more dead Americans.”

You can watch above, via CNN.