'I don't kid': Trump contradicts aides and insists he meant it when he asked for coronavirus testing to be slowed down

Donald Trump – yet again – contradicted some of his closest aides who claimed the president made a comment "in jest" during a weekend campaign rally that he asked them to slow coronavirus testing.

"I don't kid," Mr Trump told reporters Tuesday as he left the White House for a trip to Arizona, again calling Covid-19 testing a "double-edged sword" because more testing reveals more positive cases. Public health experts, including a list that work for Mr Trump's White House, say testing is critical to locating and isolating the virus.

Talking over the loud hum of Marine One on the White House's South Lawn, the president used Tuesday morning edition of "Chopper Talk" to suggest he is mostly concerned about keeping the number of confirmed cases and deaths from Covid-19 low.

One way to do that, by definition, is to test less. People would still be sick with the coronavirus, or even die, but they would not join either list.

His South Lawn anti-testing rant was a repeat of a tweet he sent just before 7 a.m.

"Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever expanding. With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!" he wrote.

But that is a much different message than White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany sent just a day before.

"No, he has not," Ms McEnany said when asked if Mr Trump had indeed, as he said at a Tusla rally, directed his aides to slow testing. "Any suggestion that testing has been slowed is not rooted in fact."

Mr Trump was "joking" and criticising the media for not reporting that the United States leads the world in testing, she added. (That is a false statement, however.)

The press secretary got a chance to clarify her own statement the next day.

"I've talked to the president about testing a lot today. He has made it abundantly clear that he appreciates testing, that we have tested more Americans than any other country has tested in their respective countries in the world. But what he was making was a serious point, and that's why he said, 'I don't kid.' He was noting he was making a serious point, but he was using sarcasm to do that at the rally," she told reporters on Air Force One.

"And the serious point he was making is that when you test more people, you identify more cases. But that shouldn't be, the cases should not be indicative of the progress we've made," Ms McEnany added Tuesday. "What's indicative of the progress we've made is the fact that, per capita, we have fewer fatalities than Europe by a large margin. So that's the point he was making on testing. But make no mistake: The president appreciates testing and is very proud of the great work that we've done."

But Mr Trump told supporters Saturday night in Oklahoma that he had given an order to slow testing.

"Then, I closed it down to Europe early, closed it down because I saw what was happening. And by the way, most people said, don't do it, don't do it. We saved hundreds of thousands of lives and all we do is get hit on like we're terrible. And what we've done with the ventilators and with the medical equipment and with testing – you know, testing is a double edged sword," he said.

"We've tested now 25 million people. It's probably 20 million people more than anybody else. Germany's done a lot, South Korea's done a lot. They call me, they say the job you're doing – here's the bad part, when you test of – when you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people, you're going to find more cases," Mr Trump said. "So, I said to my people slow the testing down, please. They test and they test."