CNN’s Jake Tapper confronted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on President Donald Trump continuing to insist on the campaign trail that the U.S. is “rounding the turn” on the coronavirus.
“President Trump said, ‘We’re rounding the corner, it’s going away,’” Tapper told Meadows. “Mark, it’s not going away even in the White House!”
Tapper was referencing the new outbreak of coronavirus among staffers for Vice President Mike Pence, including his chief of staff Marc Short.
Tapper brought up new record highs reached in just the past few days with respect to the number of covid cases, along with hospitalizations and deaths going up.
“Would you agree this remains very serious, numbers are going in the wrong direction, and people still need to take precautions?” Tapper asked.
Meadows defended the U.S. coronavirus response by echoing what the president himself has said about the number of cases going up because of the rate of testing.
“It is true the more you test the more people you’ll see,” Tapper said, “but testing has gone up 16 percent in the last month, coronavirus cases are up 55 percent. So this is not just about new tests, this is about the positiveity rate and the pandemic is spreading, the virus is spreading.”