Trump’s team dodges virus blame while jobless benefit cuts loom
US President Donald Trump’s top aides are stepping up blamegame tactics against the states, saying coronavirus testing problems and rising cases are not his fault as they try to counter new polls suggesting that his leadership failings could cost him reelection.
The move comes as Republicans on Capitol Hill haggle over a measure that would replace, with smaller benefits, $600 a week in federal aid to millions of workers that has already paid out for the last time, even as outofcontrol virus spikes cause some states to slow or reverse opening plans. The new administration drive to absolve Trump of responsibility and to speed up economic activity by encouraging people to go back to work follow the President’s previously misjudged gamble to goad states that are now suffering terribly from the pandemic to open before they had properly suppressed the virus. It also coincides with his demands that all schools open while ignoring concerns of parents and teachers.
With many states complaining that delays in processing coronavirus tests are making it impossible to check the spread of the disease, the administration claimed again on Sunday that its “Manhattan Project” on testing is sufficient. “We have enough tests right now, if we use them in the right way, to achieve the goals that we need to achieve,” Adm. Brett Giroir, the administration’s testing czar said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Giroir, who did allow that turnaround times for tests needed to improve, said states had not claimed all of the money allocated to build up test and tracing networks seen as critical to quelling the pandemic.
But Maryland’s Republican Gov. Larry Hogan told CNN’s Jake Tapper on the same show that Trump’s claims that every governor had what they needed from Washington were false. “That’s not the case here in my state of Maryland, and it’s not what I’m hearing from all of the other governors,” he said.
Last week, Trump gave a qualified endorsement to mask wearing and warned that the pandemic would likely get worse before it got better. But he also tried to distract from the raging epicenter of the pandemic in southern and western states and claimed inaccurately that the US was doing far better than many European countries that mandated longer lockdowns to fight the virus.
(CNN)