At his dud of a campaign rally this past Saturday night in Tulsa, Oklahoma, President Donald Trump claimed to the crowd that he had asked his administration’s officials to slow down Coronavirus testing in order to keep case numbers down, although officials around the White House eventually claimed that Trump was supposedly joking. Separately, Trump has frequently repeated that if Coronavirus testing went down, so would confirmed cases — as if he’s trying to convince Americans that they should sweep the pandemic under the rug, or something. The anti-Trump Republicans behind The Lincoln Project released a new ad this week hammering Trump for his rally claim about slowing down testing, pointing out that there are lives at stake.
The narrator in the new Lincoln Project ad states:
‘The most deceptive, lying president n history finally told the truth. Somehow, it was more shocking than all his deceptions.’
Then, the ad cuts away to a clip of the president’s remarks. In the clip, he says:
‘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!”‘
To be clear: testing is imperative for finding where the Coronavirus is and where it’s spreading, and this knowledge is immensely important for effectively containing the spread of the virus. If testing was dialed back, health authorities would be left essentially in the dark when it came to their efforts to control the disease, and Americans would still be dying from it, because it’s not as though turning off the metaphorical lights will make the virus go away.
In the new Lincoln Project ad, the narrator continues:
‘Slow the testing down? Slow down our chance to save tens of thousands of lives. Slow down our understanding of where COVID is and how it’s spreading. Slow down the steps to reopen the economy. Every single expert told him to test more and test faster, and now we know his response… That’s why this November, more than ever, the choice is clear: it’s America or Trump.’
Check out the new Lincoln Project ad below:
