Washington, D.C. — Today, President Donald Trump faces renewed criticism over his handling of the coronavirus crisis after telling rally-goers in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday that he had asked officials to “slow the [coronavirus] testing down.” While some White House officials attempted to dismiss the comment as a joke, Trump essentially confirmed it in a follow-up interview. The president’s comment reflects the administration’s inability—or refusal—to implement widespread testing since the beginning of the crisis. All this comes as nearly half of the country reports a rise in coronavirus cases and as President Trump struggles to get his arms around the nation’s intersecting crises of racial unrest and historic unemployment caused by his administration’s response to the pandemic.
In a new video released today by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Ruth Morhard, an 81-year-old grandmother of 14 from Chardon, Ohio, criticizes President Trump’s inability to lead the nation through this crisis. In the video, Morhard says that in the absence of leadership from the federal government, governors across the country stepped up as President Trump undermined nationwide efforts to combat the crisis while downplaying its severity and emboldening people to ignore the scientists.
“I thank God for some of the governors that we have, who have seen the problem that this coronavirus was causing and have managed to get things going while the president was calling it a hoax,”Morhard said. “I’ve watched President Trump’s press briefings, and sometimes I actually have to turn the television off. He’s trying to backtrack from the science and saying what he thinks people want to hear.”
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