DEFENDING HIS PERFORMANCE IS THE ULTIMATE IN CULTISHNESS:

If anybody was hoping that Trump had the ability to rise to the moment, his comments upon touring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should disabuse them of that notion.

Trump, speaking from the facility with a red "Keep America Great" campaign hat, found time to praise the ratings of his townhall interview on Fox News. He declared, "I don't watch CNN because CNN is fake news." He attacked Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who is dealing with the most deadly coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., as a "snake."

Dipping into the greatest hits from his impeachment defense, Trump said of the CDC tests that have run into significant problems, "the tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect, right? This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good."

When it came to the matter of testing, Trump also lied, and revealed staggering ignorance. In the face of questions about the disastrously slow rollout of testing in the U.S., Trump insisted, "Anybody that wants a test can get a test. That's what the bottom line is."

That is not remotely true. There have been many stories of people's futile efforts to try and get tested. Last Thursday, for instance, a registered nurse exhibiting symptoms in quarantine after having cared for a coronavirus patient, wrote of her difficulty obtaining a test even after it was okayed by a local health official.

Here in Washington, DC, where the first case was announced Saturday, health officials said they had the capacity to test 50 people a day. There is currently restrictive criteria for who can get tested.

South Korea, in contrast, has set up drive through centers, where individuals can get a sample taken in a few minutes without getting out of their cars, and get results back within a few days. This is exactly the sort of outside the box innovative solution that one would think a guy who ran as a practical businessman type would want to encourage or at least look into. Instead, Trump said "they're not testing. They're sampling people in other countries."

When a reporter interjected that those samples are then being tested, Trump said, "No, no -- excuse me, there's a difference. I heard what he said. They're sampling people. It's a drive-by. They give samples. Now, can we do that? Yeah, we can do that, but that's not effective like what we're doing."

The lack of adequate testing may be keeping the numbers of identified cases artificially low in the U.S., but they are also preventing public health officials from being able to identify areas of outbreak early enough to take steps to mitigate the spread. 

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