‘Who Says That?’ A Stunned Jonathan Swan Grills Trump in Heated Back-and-Forth Over Covid-19 Testing
Axios’ Jonathan Swan grilled Donald Trump on the president’s mindset around Covid-19 testing and death numbers during their 40-minute interview last week.
Trump largely pushed that more testing equals more cases, and when Swan pressed the president on death rates as a proportion of population, Trump brought out a series of charts that showed the United States “lowest in numerous categories.”
“We’ve done 55, it’ll be close to 60 million tests,” Trump said. “And there are those that say you can test too much. You do know that.”
“Who says that?” Swan asked.
“Read the manuals, read the books,” Trump shot back.
“Manuals? what manuals?” Swan asked. “What books?”
Trump didn’t specify any readings related to his claim about countries doing “too much testing,” but touted that the US is near 50 percent point-to-point tests. When pressed when all Americans could receive immediate results for Covid-19 testing, Trump said he would get back to Swan.
“Because we test so much, we show cases,” Trump said, a sentiment he’s often referred to in press briefings and on Twitter. “So we show many, many cases. We show tremendous number of — I know you’re smiling when I say that, but i’m telling you—”
“I mean c’mon, I’ve heard you say this,” Swan responded. “Just a couple points on that. I wasn’t going to continue on the testing, but you said it. So we’re testing so much because it has spread so far in America.”
“We’re testing so much because we had the ability to test because we came up with testing,” Trump said. “Jonathan, we didn’t even have a test. when I took over, we didn’t even have a test. Now, in all fairness—”
“Why would you have a test?” Swan chimed in. “The virus didn’t exist.”
After Trump continued to try and explain that the United States has more cases because of its “great” testing, Swan shifted his focus to coronavirus-related deaths, stating that the United States is averaging over 1,000 new deaths a day.
In response, Trump pulled out a series of charts to show Swan that had the United States “lowest in numerous categories.” One chart showed death rates per cases rates that the United States was “lower than the world, lower than Europe,” Trump said. Swan responded by noting he was talking about death rates per population, which the United States is one of the leaders in. “You can’t do that,” Trump shot back at Swan.
“It’s surely a relevant statistic to say the US has ‘X’ population and ‘X’ percentage of death—”
“No,” Trump interrupted. “You have to go by the cases!”
When Swan brought up statistics surrounding South Korea, Trump told him, “You don’t know that.” Swan asked if Trump thought they were “faking their statistics,” which Trump back tracked from. The president showed a third chart [which showed just four countries] and said, “We’re last, meaning we’re first.”
“A thousand Americans are dying a day, but cases, I understand, are different,” Swan said.
“No, but you’re not reporting it correctly, Jonathan,” Trump responded.
“I think I am,” Swan said back.
Trump brought up a few states, like Arizona and Florida, where the cases “were leveling off” and asked shouldn’t the federal government be “getting credit for that,” referring to the United States coronavirus testing numbers.
You can watch a clip above, and the full interview below, via HBO:
