Questioned Thursday about the federal government’s failure to increase testing capacity amid the coronavirus outbreak, President Trump tried to deflect blame onto the media during a White House briefing from the coronavirus task force, and accused reporters of “siding with China.”
Numerous press reports in recent days have detailed slowness or inaction by the Trump administration in responding to the escalating coronavirus pandemic, as the federal government struggled to get adequate testing capacity deployed to states, among other issues.
“We were prepared. The only thing we were not prepared for was the media. The media has not treated it fairly,” Trump said as he responded to a question about why the US was not ready with testing capacity given his claim that he knew early on the coronavirus outbreak was a pandemic.
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Public frustrations over the difficulties getting tested for the new virus have been building since the first US case was confirmed Jan. 20. Early missteps with test kits developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coupled with strict government criteria about who qualified for screening, have led to widespread reports of people struggling to get tested.
The president has also faced questions about his insistence on calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus,” even as public health experts say that efforts to blame a single nation for a global pandemic are counterproductive and incentivize governments to waste critical time covering up a rapidly escalating problem.
A reporter for One America News Network, a pro-Trump media outlet, accused reporters of “[teaming] up with Chinese communist party narratives” over their questions about whether using the term “Chinese virus” is racist.
“They are siding with China,” Trump said in response, singling out a Wall Street Journal report that detailed a series of failures in testing as the coronavirus arrived on American shores. “They are siding with many others, China is the least of it.”
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Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Christina Prignano can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @cprignano.
