Trump Says He Asked Officials to ‘Slow the Testing Down’

President Donald Trump says the rise in coronavirus cases is the result of more testing for the virus across.

During his first campaign rally in months, Trump said, “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. They test, and they test, we got tests, and people don’t know what’s going on,” he added.

Watch the video below:

His received swift criticism on social media:

https://twitter.com/EvanMcMullin/status/1274503196048834561

https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1274500103911493632

https://twitter.com/amandacarpenter/status/1274506538657423361

A White House official said Trump made the comment as a joke:

Earlier this week, Trump also said that increased testing leads to an increase coronavirus case count, “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases if any.”

And in May, he said, “We have the best testing in the world … Could be that testing’s, frankly, overrated. Maybe it is overrated.”

“We have more cases than anybody in the world, but why? Because we do more testing,” he continued.

Finally, Trump said, “When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases. They don’t want to write that. It’s common sense. We test much more.”

Experts have said increased testing is important because it allows officials to track and isolate infected individuals