Trade adviser Peter Navarro outside the White Huse on June 18.
Photo: Chris Kleponis/Zuma PressWhite House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Sunday that the Trump administration is preparing for a second wave of coronavirus infections in the fall.
“We are filling the stockpile in anticipation of a possible problem in the fall. We are doing everything we can beneath the surface, working as hard as we possibly can,’’ he told CNN. “You prepare—you prepare for what can possibly happen. I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but of course you prepare.’’
Vice President Mike Pence in a June 16 editorial in The Wall Street Journal said: “Such panic is overblown.”
The White House didn’t immediately respond Sunday to Mr. Navarro’s comments.
Meanwhile, Democrats on Sunday criticized Mr. Trump’s remark at his rally the night before that he had asked the government to slow down testing of the virus because higher numbers look bad.
“The president’s efforts to slow down desperately needed testing to hide the true extent of the virus mean more Americans will lose their lives,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said, adding that administration officials would be asked about the issue during a hearing on the virus Tuesday.
During the rally in Tulsa, Okla., Mr. Trump said, “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.’”
White House officials said his rally comment was meant as a joke. “You know that was tongue in cheek. Come on now. Come on now,” Mr. Navarro said Sunday. “That was tongue in cheek, please.”
Mr. Trump has made similar comments in recent weeks.
“I personally think testing is overrated, even though I created the greatest testing machine in history,” Mr. Trump told The Wall Street Journal last week. “I’m not saying testing is bad. And certainly you test people, and you want to see whether or not they have it. But the testing can lead to a lot of mistakes also. Look, if we didn’t test all the cases that we’re reporting, you wouldn’t know about any of those cases. In many ways, it makes us look bad.”
And at a White House event last week, he said, “If you don’t test, you don’t have any cases. If we stopped testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.”
Write to Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com
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