Trump slams 'false and misleading' claims that U.S. lacks enough coronavirus tests to reopen

President Trump on Friday slammed critics who said he was moving too quickly to reopen the U.S. economy due to a lack of coronavirus testing kits.

"There have been some very partisan voices in the media and politics who have spread false and misleading information about our testing capacity,"  Trump said during a White House coronavirus task force briefing. "It's totally false and misleading, demonstrating a complete failure to understand the enormous scope of the testing capabilities that we've brought online. And we started really from ground zero. We started from really being very, very outdated and obsolete as a country, from the past. I will say this, if they didn't understand it." 

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo earlier Friday said that states need better funding from the federal government for coronavirus testing to help reopen the economy, which sparked a real-time response from Trump on Twitter.

Cuomo, who at his press briefing issued an executive order that directs all public and private New York state labs to coordinate with the Department of Health to prioritize diagnostic testing, took at swipe at the Trump administration what he considers it trying to "pass the bucks" on ramping up testing in the state.

"If we don't have federal help on testing, we have a real problem," the governor said, adding that the federal government “cannot wipe their hands of this and say the states are responsible.”

During Cuomo's press conference, the president took to Twitter, suggested the governor spend more time 'doing' and less time "complaining."

"It's really, unfortunately, I hate to say this because we've been getting along very well, but it would be false reporting," Trump said Friday during the press briefing. "Because they understand the capability. And it's going to be up to the states to use that capability. The states have local points where they can go. A governor can call the mayors, and the mayors can call representatives and everybody."

Vice President Pence and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said Friday at the task force briefing that states currently have a sufficient amount of testing to meet the requirements to begin the first phase of re-opening  after the coronavirus outbreak.

Read the White House's plan to reopen by clicking the PDF below.