News this week that one of Trump's personal attendants tested positive for the coronavirus prompted the White House team to talk a lot about how much Trump, the vice-president, and everyone around them get tested, with results within minutes.
Meanwhile, as Late Night host Seth Meyers pointed out on Thursday, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany ridiculed a question about expanding testing to all Americans who are facing going back to work before health experts say it's safe to do so.
"The point isn't that the president shouldn't get tested," explained Meyers during his Closer Look segment. "It's that if he wants to force working people back into the economy prematurely in the middle of a deadly pandemic, he should make sure everyone else can get tested too."
As noted by Meyers, widespread testing is considered key to suppressing the virus by basically all health experts. However, testing faults, shortages, and delays have been one of the biggest failings in Trump's handling of the crisis.
Now the Trump White House is pushing for states to reopen even as the coronavirus pandemic kills thousands of Americans every day. The president is also maintaining his callous rhetoric about a death toll in the hundreds of thousands being the acceptable cost for a swifter economic recovery, and is reportedly moving to undermine accurate reporting on just how bad things are.
"Don't accept the false dichotomy between staying locked down and reopening the economy," Meyers concluded. "There's a third option where we can safely reopen. It involves doing exactly what Trump and his allies are doing for themselves: widespread testing. But Trump and his allies are only interested in protecting themselves while they use you as cannon fodder to rev up the economy."
