‘I don’t kid’: Trump says he wasn’t joking about slowing coronavirus testing
President Donald Trump on Tuesday insisted he was serious when he revealed that he had directed his administration to slow coronavirus testing in the United States, shattering the defenses of senior White House aides who argued Trump’s remarks were made in jest.
“I don’t kid. Let me just tell you. Let me make it clear,” Trump told reporters, when pressed on whether his comments at a campaign event Saturday in Tulsa, Okla., were intended as a joke.
Administration officials have scrambled in recent days to clean up the president’s remarks from his weekend rally in Oklahoma.
www.politico.com
I've always felt it was one of the more revealing moments of his first term. His staff felt that way too. They tried to make excuses for him but he threw them under the bus. Much the same as when his staff tried to play pin the tail on the donkey over Comey's firing until Don told Lester Holt he did it because of the "Russia thing."
Fast forward to trump coercing Bezos to reverse course over posting tariff related price increases on Amazon's site. (Has any prez ever meddled in "free enterprise" more than Don?) Just as not having an accurate count of people with COVID didn't change the actual numbers of those infected, people not seeing exactly how much more they are paying due to tariffs doesn't change the fact they're paying more. Both matters showing how trump has consistently been interested in projecting style over substance. Likely because he has plenty of the former and none of the latter.