Trump: Number of U.S. Coronavirus Cases Is ‘Badge of Honor’

President Donald Trump has claimed the high number of Coronavirus cases in the U.S. is a sign of how well the country is doing on testing. The President argued on Tuesday that the reason the numbers are so large is because the country is leading in testing, even though this is not true.

“By the way, you know, when you say that we lead in cases, that’s because we have more testing than anybody else,” Trump said. “It’s a great tribute to the testing and all of the work that a lot of professionals have done.”

“When we have a lot of cases, I don’t look at that as a bad thing. I look at that in a certain respect as being a good thing, because it means our testing is much better. So, if we were testing a million people instead of 14 million people, it would have far few cases, right?”

“So, I view it as a badge of honor. Really, it’s a badge of honor.”

The U.S. has suffered from a lack of testing capacity as other countries have managed to test in much greater numbers considering their populations. Initially, the President said anybody who wanted a test could have one before backtracking and then criticizing testing.

There are now more than 1.5 million Coronavirus cases in the United States.