Rebuking President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force testing efforts, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., disagrees with the experts' claim there is enough testing in states to enter Phase I of Reopening America Again.
"We're way late on it, and that is a failure – the president gets an F, a failure on the testing," Pelosi told "Fox News Sunday," despite Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health signing off on the fact there is enough testing for states to begin Phase I of the plan to reopen.
"Dr. Fauci is right, if it is done properly. It hasn't been. And, that, I think, he puts it in the 'if' if it is done is an admission that it hasn't been done."
Fauci is on the White House coronavirus task force, which confirmed Friday there is ample testing capacity in states for a phased reopening in lesser infected areas of the country. Trump said the U.S. has the admiration of world leaders for their comprehensive testing done to date, more than 3.78 million tests through Friday – now capable of doing more than 1 million COVID-19 tests per week and having completed 1.2 million tests in the past week.
Vice President Mike Pence added there will be 5 million tests completed before the end of the 30 days to slow the spread.
Fauci was directly asked if he signed off on the plan to reopen, and he said yes, if testing, contact tracing, and quarantine protocols are adhered to.
"He's right, it has to be testing," Pelosi told host Chris Wallace of Fauci. "It has to be tracing, contact tracing. It has to be treatment. And it has to be quarantine. It's part of something bigger as well to be done properly."
After the claim of being "late" on the testing response, Wallace then pressed Pelosi walking through Chinatown in her district Feb. 24, encouraging people to come out and support them and their businesses because they were safe – almost one month after Trump had banned travel from China to try to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
She deflected, suggesting the president is racist.
"What we're trying to do is to end the discrimination, the stigma, that was going out against the Asian-American community," she told Wallace. "And in fact, if you will look, the record will show that our Chinatown has been a model of containing and preventing the virus.
"So, I've confidence in our folks there and thought it was necessary to offset some of the things that the president and others were saying about Asian-Americans and making them a target of violence across the country and some hate crimes they committed."
Pelosi did not mention if that Chinatown model is related to their testing capacity, later saying dealing with the coronavirus has to be "science-based."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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