Symone Sanders, a senior adviser to presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, said on Sunday that President Trump’s quip that he had ordered coronavirus testing scaled back was the “most damning thing” from his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“This is an appalling attempt to lessen the numbers only to make him look good,” Sanders said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think that’s what will be remembered long after last night’s debacle of a rally.”
“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,'” Trump said at the Saturday night rally, his first since the beginning of the pandemic.
While the White House and Trump’s re-election campaign has said the comments were in jest, the president has made similar comments before, saying earlier this month: “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.”
Sanders on Sunday also denied there was any double standard between Biden praising the massive anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests around the country.
“There is no double standard here, protesting is an American right,” she said.
“We are talking about the president of the United States … holding a rally, not following the precautions that his own public health officials have put out,” she added. “The president has to lead. President Trump has demonstrated so many times in every sense of the word that he is unable to do so.”
“The difference between folks going out and protesting police brutality and the president planning a rally where six of his own advance staffers before the rally contracted COVID-19 is as clear as day,” she told Fox News’ Chris Wallace. Sanders also pointed out that data thus far do not indicate a spike in big cities since the protests began.
Wallace also asked Sanders about data indicating that, even in polling that shows Biden with a wide lead, the majority of Biden supporters view their vote as a vote against Trump rather than for the former vice president, while the numbers are reversed among the president’s supporters.
“What we saw in the primaries is that Vice President Biden in contest after contest handily won but also turned out voters,” Sanders responded, noting increased turnout in states such as Virginia.
“I think these numbers also spell trouble for President Trump,” she added, saying they indicate “that this is a referendum on his presidency.”