Trump’s former chief of staff attacks coronavirus efforts: “We still have a test problem”

Former White House chief of staff Mick MulvaneyMick Mulvaney NIGHT POWER: WH lobbied to ‘fix’ the Weather Service tweet that contradicts Trump in the ‘Sharpiegate’ incident, says watchdog The Supreme Court rules that much of Oklahoma belongs to the Native American tribe WH lobbied to ‘correct’ the Weather Service tweet that contradicts Trump in the ‘Sharpiegate’ incident, watchdog Mulvaney says: Trump faces difficulties if 2020 elections become ‘referendum’ on him MORE He wrote an opinion piece on Monday calling for the next stimulus package approved by lawmakers to focus on fighting the new coronavirus, hitting testing efforts by the US.

“Any stimulus must go to the root cause of our recession: dealing with Covid,” Mulvaney wrote in the CNBC op-ed. “I know it is not popular to speak in some Republican circles, but we still have a testing problem in this country. My son was recently screened; we had to wait 5-7 days to get results. My daughter wanted to be tested.” before visiting her grandparents, but they told her she didn’t qualify. That’s just inexcusable at this point in the pandemic. “

The slip in the test comes as President TrumpDonald John TrumpDavis: The Supreme Court decision is bad news for Trump, good news for Vance Meadows trying to root out suspected White House leakers by providing them information: Axios Pressley beats DeVos for reopening of schools : ‘I would not trust you to worry about a house plant, much less my son’ MORE He has repeatedly praised testing efforts, attributing an increase in cases nationwide to more testing.

“If we stop testing right now, we would have very few, if any, cases,” Trump said during a White House event in June, highlighting the administration’s actions to help older people.

Trump shared a similar message again on July 4, tweeting: “Cases, Cases, Cases! If we did not try so much and so successfully, we would have very few cases. If you evaluate 40,000,000 people, you are going to have many cases that, without the test (like other countries), would not appear every night in the False News of the Night ”.

Mulvaney’s opinion piece comes as several states, including California, Florida, Texas, and Arizona, see record cases of the virus and as Congress debates what their next aid bill will include.

House Democrats approved their initial offer of a fifth bill in May. That proposal totaled nearly $ 3 trillion, including approximately $ 1 trillion in additional aid to state and local governments, another round of stimulus controls, and expanded nutritional assistance. However, that bill has stalled, and lawmakers are debating how to pass a bill before September.

Both sides seem to agree that funding to increase coronavirus testing should be part of the bill, but they are discussing unemployment benefits, another round of stimulus checks, and other measures that respond to the pandemic.